| Title | : | Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0060609176 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780060609177 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1994 |
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith Reviews
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I read this little book several years back, and wanted to make sure it isn’t forgotten. Marcus Borg is one of my favorite writers, and this is what I’ve always considered his “coming out” book. The one that lays bare Borg’s understanding of the historical Jesus, and Borg’s journey from blind belief into a more complete, contemporary appreciation for Jesus and what his message means for mankind today. In this book is a Christianity for the 21st century and a Jesus who can be embraced by everyone.
One quote sums up the book well: Borg describes Jesus as a “spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion.” I’m uncertain if Borg would use precisely the same words today, sixteen years later, because the wheels of Jesus scholarship continue to turn, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t change much … he has found the core Jesus. Meeting Jesus again for the first time, we are invited to appreciate Jesus’ beauty against a backdrop of dominating religion, and share in Jesus’ struggle to help compassion overcome purity. It was this very purity system of the Jews which led to social injustice, and which Jesus found most constricting.
This is one of those books everyone should read before giving up on Christianity. -
I've had a decade and a half of estrangement from the religion of my youth (Christianity), with fits and starts of making peace with it and attempting to integrate it into my current spirituality and worldview. Marcus Borg gives me a way to perfectly integrate Jesus into my spirituality, as well as my work as an interfaith minister. Since finishing this book, I've been (only half jokingly) referring to myself as a Borgian Christian. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone from a Christian background--especially those who left evangelical or fundamentalist forms of Christianity that seemed nonsensical, narrow, and out-of-touch. This little book is an elixir for the wounded former-Christian soul.
Also worth noting, it's a quick and easy read, but contains many pages of notes for further inquiry and research if interested. -
I found myself nodding my head in agreement quite a lot more then I had expected to as I read this book. When I began reading Christian books way back in college, one of the first I read was The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. I am pretty sure Borg, as a member of the Jesus Seminar, was mentioned in that book in a not-positive way. My experience with Borg was limited for many years to mentions in books by those who disagreed with him. Eventually I read a book where he and NT Wright dialogues and I found myself in much more agreement with Wright. At the same time, I did recall finding Borg not as...evil as my perception of him had become.
In other words, Borg, and those like him, had been painted as evil people, perhaps servants of Satan, with an agenda to tear down historic Christian faith. But as I read that previous book, then the first chapter of this one, I was moved by Borg's personal story. It turns out he is just a man trying to figure out the truth of who Jesus is.
Do I disagree with him on many things? Yes. I am still in the more traditional camp on issues such as the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus. Yet in that disagreement I can still appreciate his scholarship, as well as a well-written, often moving book such as Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
This book is not a scholarly examination of who Jesus is. There is a little of that, but it reads, at least to me, much more like a Christian living book. As far as Borg's message is a call for us to seek to follow Jesus rather than go along with whatever it is the surrounding world preaches, this book could almost sneak into the "evangelical devotional" category.
Maybe I'm just getting kinder in my old age. Years ago I may have gotten mad at this book for all I disagreed with, ignoring the places I agree. Now I find truth and encouragement where I agree and manage to gently move past, though not ignore, the things I disagree with.
I guess the test will be when I read more Borg books and he works hard to show how the resurrection didn't really happen...will I still be kind or will I throw the book across the room? -
Loads of food for thought. Loved his thoughts on Jesus as a man preaching a compassionate God.
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At what point is ANY of this crap actually Biblical Christianity?
Borg would probably agree with me - he doesn't really get his Jesus from the WHOLE Bible. Once again; a NEW and improved secular Buddhist-type Jesus that everyone can love (except those pesky Bible-thumping Conservative Saints. They don't tolerate this cherry-picking cut & paste social gospel theology that belittles their King and Savior.)
I didn't bother to mark this book up - there was WAY TOO MANY problems to even begin not highlighting every paragraph. I was thinking maybe I could read the book twice and make comments the 2nd time. But that would be a waste of my precious life and scholarly resources (I do have about 50 actual GOOD books to read). And I think the goddess of wisdom "Sophia" would have a proverb or two to say about that.
One fun thing I do with these liberal crap books is: notice the names of people that support them. Basically a who's who of the liberal Jesus Seminar Anti-Biblical movement. Rt Reverend J. Shelby Spong always cracks me up as a source of approval. Then I notice the places, or institutions these people are supported by, and remind myself to generally mock them. They are no friend to Biblical Christianity.
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I learned something new - Marcus is a clergy spouse. His lady is an Episcopal Priest. And as we know: neither of those things are really Biblical. My question is: Why does Marcus even attempt to toy with Jesus and Christianity? There's not much in it that he accepts as trustworthy and Godly.
So lets get this Jesus Seminar crap out of the way first. These people claim to know the Bible better than JESUS, or Paul, or Peter, or Moses. They know it so well that they have deemed themselves worthy of tossing most of it in the garbage. Then they mosey on pretending they are enlightened secular Bible scholars with the remaining 10%. And they justify this by? Ummmmh... preference and opinion. Yep!
So this is what we are dealing with in this book. Which is really NOTHING of historical Christianity (From the Garden incident to the Book of Revelation).
Horrifying quote:
"I received this image of Jesus in what I have since learned to call the state of precritical naivete..."
Now Marcus is so wise and critical he accepts Sophia, his NEW goddess of wisdom. Thanks to him putting the cart before the horse and applying later feminism issues to the Word of God. Critical indeed!
Once again, Borg is too smart and sophisticated to have childlike faith: "...the images of Christianity and of Jesus that I had received as a child were no longer persuasive or compelling. I had become aware that it was difficult and perhaps not necessary to take the Bible and Christian teachings literally..."
And the sad "Hellish" declaration by Marcus:
"...Jesus as the divine savior who knew himself to be the Son of God and who offered up his life for the sins of the world--was not historically true. That, I learned, was not what the historical Jesus was like."
But it's okay Borg says: "...the understanding of the gospels that has developed over the last two hundred years of Biblical scholarship. I learned that the gospels are neither divine documents nor straightforward historical records. They are not divine products inspired directly by God...nor are they eyewitness accounts written by people who had accompanied Jesus and simply sought to report what they had seen and heard."
There's really no reason to discuss the rest of the book. NO reason to bother with Borg's Jesus at all.
The only real question is: Why does Borg claim to be a Christian or Jesus' follower at all? There's basically no Holy Spirit, no risen savior, no Israelite promise, no Satan or angels & demons, (not even a Freakin' Talking Donkey... that's it for me then, I'm out!) no trustworthy word of God (especially the Gospel of John)... Just a few historical random scribbles that sound kind of Buddhish and Spiritual. But there's SURE a goddess Sophia. (that silly Episcopalian church stuff. That's what you get for letting your wife be a Priest.)
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Comprehending the Bible is a mystery to Marcus. He proves this by not understanding Jesus and his use of parables: Borg babble "The aphorisms and parables of Jesus function in a particular way: they are invitational forms of speech. Jesus used them to invite his hearers to see something they might not otherwise see."
Ummmh? Actually it's the opposite Marcus. Mark 4
11And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”
13And he said to them, ���Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?
Yes Borgy, how WILL you understand any of the Bible? Which brings me to this imaginary Q source crap. Borg assumes since there is OBVIOUSLY no Holy Spirit to connect the writings of the Gospel accounts - then there must be a secular atheistic shared source called "Q". Which nobody has ever seen or claimed to have seen (or used). Basically that is all the Jesus seminar buddies ever do - sit around and poke at a steaming pile of manure like this -- until it becomes an academic cooked-steak for the masses.
It is kind of funny when Borg trumps Bibical scripture with gnostic writings and other church-discarded historical toiletries. I would expect nothing less from the Jesus Seminar.
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The funnest bit of this book was the Wisdom Sophia claims. Chapter 5: Jesus, the Wisdom of God - Sophia Become Flesh.
That pretty much says it all right there. Pretty similar to Eve in the Garden buying into Satan's best lie from a talking snake. (Maybe if Borg actually believed any of the Bible he wouldn't have fallen for the same old lines.)
Genesis 3
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So we get 150 pages from Marcus J. Borg on how to open our eyes. Be just like Sophia.
So what do we do with this Wisdom goddess? Well we DON'T make a deity out of her - or try to claim that she is Jesus. We let Proverbs use her as a simple pleasant little personification of Motherly wisdom. like we do anytime the Bible gives a Disney scenario to help understand. Here's a fun example:
Proverbs 9
The Way of Folly
13The woman Folly is loud;
she is seductive and knows nothing.
14She sits at the door of her house;
she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
15calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
16“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
And to him who lacks sense she says,
17“Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
18But he does not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Are we supposed to assume the goddess FOLLY is in the Trinity as well? NO, we simply allow the story to be what it is: a personification for making a point.
Strange that Borg makes a god out of Wisdom...yet does nothing with Folly? Or did the Jesus Seminar simply erase these verses for secular materialistic scholarship?!
Funny that Borg would quote the Bible by showing:
Proverbs 1:20
SOPHIA cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
So I checked 22 other Bible translations...none mentioned Sophia. This is how Borg poorly proves his desperate point. Later Borg says "The Jewish personification of wisdom as Sophia, and the attribution to her of Divine qualities, becomes even more developed in two intertestamental books - Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon."
YES, very nice. But that doesn't make Sophia a Biblical deity. Simply a Wisdom reference. And don't get too attached to the non-biblical books - fun to read. But just not scripture. Although I bet Borg would LOVE to force us to accept them and his pet deity.
Once again, just to prove the point: Borg babble
"Thus the language about Sophia is not simply personification of wisdom in female form, but personification of God in female form. Sophia is a female image for God..."
Remember to go back to that QUEEN FOLLY bit in Proverbs 9. Marcus tries desperately to get us to gullibly accept that Jesus agrees with Borg about this Sophia nonsense. Borg shows us: Luke 11:49
"Therefore also the Sophia of God said, "I will send them prophets and emissaries, some of whom they will kill and persecute..."
Of course, 22 other Bibles basically state:
"Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute..."
Sorry borgy - but this time Jesus is actually talking about God. THE GOD! God the Father. Chances are - God put this in the Bible just for liberal butt-heads to swoon over in the 21st century. God is fun that way. Many people don't realize the Bible does as much damage as it does good. Atheists and liberals are offended by the Word of God --- and the Saints are endlessly inspired and filled with Hope and Promise from our Savior. Sadly - Most readers of this crap assume they are in the wrong group.
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And for future entertainment. Borg boasts:
"But John Dominic Crossan in his recent book on Jesus argues that, with the collapse of the apocalyptic understanding of the kingdom..."
I'll stick with John MacArthur and Chuck Swindol (and 100's of other trusted Bible scholars) on this one. And generally just laugh endlessly at Borg and Crossan and their silly Bible-hating club. -
Wow, this book shatters everything weird about Christianity and confirms the best: compassionate advocacy for social justice. Please read this book and discuss it with me! Although I do want more details on some of this specific claims Borg makes, he draws an extremely illuminating distinction between the person that Jesus was and the religion created after his death. As I read this book, everything made sense. It doesn't undermine Christianity, but it makes it believable.
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Written by a scholar who is an excellent writer for lay folks, and includes his personal and spiritual growth stories.
This book has it all. Who has grown up in the Judeo-Christian tradition and not wondered what Jesus and his life was really like? Here is a author whose deep curiosity led him to study everything written 'about' the first century, and everything written 'during' the first century, that would impact this middle eastern area of the Roman Empire. His study of the original Greek and Aramaic texts added some interesting nuances to words commonly accepted as truth today. (Elaine Pagels would explain the politics in the choice the translators made of a certain word over another) I especially like the section on the wisdom of God which is the feminine word Sophia. But my favorite section was the explanation of the exclusiveness of conventional wisdom and compassion of alternative wisdom: the wide or narrow path. Seeing the way Jewish life was organized around the purity laws vs. Jesus' challenge to live alternatively with love (nothing or no one seemed unclean or outcast to Jesus)- really puts a whole new perspective on what his message of good news was all about. Each chapter is footnoted with PAGES of resources for those who need more info.
Recommend highly for those ready to go beyond the literal stories we grew up with (and may be bored with) to plum deeper for an alternative eye-opening and truly compassionate experience of the Spirit Jesus tried to show us.
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In this succinct punch of a book, Borg lays forth his sketch of the “historical Jesus” in four broad strokes: spirit person, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement founder. His illustration is of the “pre-Easter Jesus,” meaning “Jesus as a figure of history before his death.” This Jesus, he argues, is not the same as the “post-Easter Jesus” — the understanding of Jesus that his followers came to after his death. This is the sort of content I expected to find in Borg’s work: a dissection of scripture to illumine the historical life of Jesus. I expected that this would come with a rejection of Christ’s living power.
Profoundly, though, he conveys his idea of the historical Jesus while still affirming that the pre-Easter Jesus of history and the post-Easter Christ of faith can both guide us today. This was perhaps my biggest takeaway — engaging with an academic and historical study of Christ does not necessarily take away from a spiritual relationship with him. As Borg puts it in his penultimate paragraph:Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the Living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit.
Another of Borg’s central ideas is the understanding of Jesus’s message as one of “alternative wisdom,” which contrasts to “conventional wisdom.” In Jesus’s setting, “conventional wisdom” consisted of the Torah laws of purity upheld by the Jewish establishment. Jesus preached against the system of purity and advocated for a new system of compassion; yet, ironically, the conventional wisdom of today is both brought forth and upheld by the Christian establishment. This understanding of Jesus’s message as alternative wisdom underlines its intrinsically subversive nature.
Along these lines, Borg concludes by laying out three different stories of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The most popular story is one of sin and forgiveness. It goes like this: “because Jesus died and rose again, my sins are forgiven.” It is liberating to be reminded that this is not the only story, especially since this story has been perverted into upholding its own kind of conventional wisdom. The other stories are of exile and homecoming and of bondage and liberation. Borg argues that these two alternative stories of death and resurrection are inherently subversive, which could explain why the focus of the institution became the story of sin, guilt, and forgiveness.
We all, in the West, grow up under the shadow of the Jesus story. I’d recommend Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time to anyone who is interested in exploring what that story was, what that story is, what that story has the potential to be. -
Fascinating and illuminating book that is both scholarly with some elements of the personal in which Borg chronicles his own evolving Christianity and relationship with Jesus as well as teaching the lessons of his 30 years of work and study as a Biblical scholar. Ultimately, Borg offers an extremely useful and informative book both looking at how beliefs and understandings of who Jesus was have been in a constant state of change since his death, but also of how a historical/metaphorical reading of Jesus and the Bible can open the door to a deeply meaningful religious experience and Christianity. That believing in Jesus's literal divinity/resurrection isn't the necessary litmus test to being Christian.
In this book, he unpacks what we know of Jesus as a man, a teacher of "alternative wisdom," that challenged the conventional wisdom of the age (and still challenges it) and that he was a not just a wisdom teacher, but the "Wisdom of God," Sophia (the gendered FEMALE personification of God's wisdom. That he didn't need to be the literal son of God (and, indeed, Borg unpacks how little shows that Jesus ever thought he was - as part of this, he unpacks how the book of John in the Bible is non-literal speech of Jesus), but rather Jesus spoke and taught of a deeply personal relationship he had with God, that others could seek as well. In that, Jesus was a "highly spiritual person," for whom God was an experiential reality.
I would do a disservice trying to paraphrase Borg's book here, because his ideas and arguments build on one another, with lots of examples and backing for his claims. The ultimate lesson though, from Borg, is that reading and understanding Jesus in this historical and metaphorical way, in no way diminishes his power or in the believer's Christianity. This is, I'm sure, a way of understanding Jesus that is heretical to many fundamentalists, but it is a way of understanding Jesus that can be powerful for other Christians, and a way toward "being transform[ed] into more and more compassionate beings, 'into the likeness of Christ.'" (136)
However, while this is in no way an attempt to reconstruct the research and arguments of this book, here are a few excerpts to give a taste for the book:
"rather than being the exclusive revelation of God, [Jesus] is one of many mediators of the sacred," (37) --- i.e. this understanding allows you to a Christian pluralist, i.e. all the worlds Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, atheists, etc., aren't going to hell because they were raised non-Christians. There are many ways to approach God, and Jesus and Christianity is one of those very real, and very valid, ways.
In this type of understanding, "Christian life moves beyond believing in God to being in a relationship to God." (39)
On the Bible and Bible stories:
"Since they were originally oral stories, we should not think of them as the set pieces we have in the gospels, recited word for word." (86)
And that the reason and power of pursuing a relationship with God through Jesus is that: "A relationship with God leads from anxiety to a life of peace and trust. It leads from bondage of self-protection to the freedom of self-forgetfullness. It leads from life centered in culture to life centered in God." (88)
He concludes with this statement that: "Belief did not originally mean believing in a set of doctrines or teaching; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean to 'give one's heart to.' The 'heart' is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one's mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one's self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit." (137)
And also that: "It is an image of the Christian life not primarily as believing or being good but as a relationship with God. That relationship does not leave us unchanged but transforms us into more and more compassionate beings, 'into the likeness of Christ.'" (136)
So, in a lot of ways, Borg articulates a Christianity that is unlike the one in which fundamentalist believe in. I wish every fundamentalist would read this book, not that they would all open their minds to the arguments here, or agree with all of them, but that they should at least open their minds to these ideas, because ultimately, regardless of your approach, Christianity should turn one towards compassion and love. And likewise, I wish non-Christians read this to understand that while the fundamentalist creationists are the public face of Christianity in the media, they do not represent, or even begin to touch, the fullness, depth and breadth of what it can mean to be a Christian. -
An exciting book that seeks to explain who Jesus actually was based on the gospels and scripture, stripping away the mythic superstructure that Christians built after Jesus' death, and demonstrating that what has become the dominant mode of understanding Jesus' life through scripture is only one of several metaphorical threads that are present in the Bible and understood by early Christians, and this narrowing of meaning has come at significant cost to the imaging of what religious life for the Christian should be.
Borg argues that Jesus never knew himself to be the Son of God in a unique sense, or as one whose mission was to die for the sins of the world. That picture comes out of the Gospel of John, which contains the great "I am" statements of Jesus, which are agreed by Biblical scholars to be ahistorical. John, the latest of the gospels, presents Jesus as he had come to be understood by Christians of that time. The earlier gospels do not show Jesus speaking in such a manner.
Rather, Borg sees Jesus as what he calls a "spirit person", one who has visions and direct experiences of the reality of God. People who have such experiences are found across cultures and times. Born into a culture whose social structure was rigidly based on a purity scheme, whose vision of religious life was to be as "pure" as God demanded, Jesus did not recognize his culture's social/religious constructs as consistent with his experience of God. His teaching sought to replace the "Be holy for I the Lord your God am holy" command of Leviticus with a "Be compassionate as God is compassionate" instruction (Luke).
His public life also contained an argument for moving from secondhand religion to firsthand religion: moving beyond secular and religious conventional wisdom, which is what we are taught to believe by others, to a subversive wisdom that comes from personal relationship and experience with God. The religious life is thus about relationship, not measuring up to a body of rules and regulations and expectations.
Borg brings out three main story narratives in the Bible, which originate with the experiences of the Hebrews but extend to have meaning for everyone in every time:
1)The Exodus story is saying that the human condition is bondage (to what? a great many things...) and the solution is liberation, which involves a journey through the wilderness, toward God and with God.
2)The Exile and Return story says that we feel separated from our true home and long to return. Exile is often marked by grief, and the religious life is a journey with God back home.
3)The Priestly story says that we are sinners who are guilty before God, in need of forgiveness. Religious life is not so much a journey as a story of sin, guilt, sacrifice and forgiveness.
All three of these stories were important to Jesus and early Christianity, but over time one of them came to dominate the popular understanding of Jesus and the Christian life. Obviously that would be the Priestly story.
Borg lays out six "severe distortions in our understanding of the Christian life" that result from the dominance of this priestly story:
1)Produces a static understanding of the Christian life, a repeated cycle of sin, guilt, and forgiveness.
2)Creates a passive understanding of the Christian life. Rather than seeking transformation, in ourselves and in our culture, we see that God has already done what needs to be done. It is a politically domesticating story... which suited the rulers of those societies where Christianity became the official religion quite well.
3)Tends to an understanding of Christianity as primarily a religion of the afterlife: better get right with God before you die!
4)Imagines God primarily as lawgiver and judge, whose forgiveness becomes conditional on our believing a certain dogma, that of Jesus' atoning death.
5)Creates a narrative that is very hard to believe: God's only and literal son came to this planet to sacrifice himself for the sins of humans, because God could not forgive us otherwise, and we are saved from damnation only by believing this. It's a powerful metaphor, but argued literally it alienates many people from Christianity.
6)Some people don't feel much guilt, for whatever reason. Yet they may recognize their state of bondage, or their feelings of alienation and estrangement. The priestly story offers them nothing, while the other Biblical narrative stories do.
In all, the book is a great popular level manuscript that demonstrates a less well known historical understanding of Jesus and his teachings, and offers an alternative to the dominant theological interpretations present in our culture. -
Marcus Borg is a heretic - he denies the orthodox doctrines of the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, etc. OK, now that's out of the way let me tell you why I enjoyed this book despite its serious flaws.
Borg provides an autobiographical account of his own journey from child-like faith through adolescent skepticism to adult rejection and then back to an identification as, I guess, a "Christian" (although I would argue his view of ideal Christianity more closely represents a New Age spirituality dressed with the terminology of Christianity. His account felt real and demonstrated good self-awareness and I empathised with him. The things he rejected in his evangelical Lutheran upbringing are the things I recoil from in contemporary evangelicalism. When he talks about the Christian life as a transformational journey in relationship with God I think all my colleagues and I would agree with him - except that he doesn't use those words with the sort of meanings that orthodox Christians would use those words to mean. (E.G. God is more of a life-force that is immanent in all the universe and transcends the material plane, but is never described in terms of personhood, so how can there be a "relationship" if God is not a person?)
Borg, as a leading Jesus scholar, obviously has a wide breadth of knowledge about the historical background and there were a few pieces of information that were new to me. That was good. I disagreed, obviously, with the image of Jesus he constructed with them. Unsurprisingly, I largely agree with his four broad strokes of the picture of Jesus:
1. a "spirit person" (i.e. someone who has a direct relationship with God and mediates that experience to others so they can have a direct relationship with God - an insightful way of describing the power of Jesus' ministry even if Borg's terms all have different meanings that my meanings for those terms);
2. a "teacher of wisdom" (i.e. God's wisdom rather than conventional wisdom, although again Borg goes too far in contrasting these two. I think it is best to think of a both/and rather than either/or scenario)
3. a "social prophet" (i.e. challenged the existing social order to advocate for, in my orthodox words, kingdom values)
4. a "movement founder" (his expansion of this I found the most disappointing, probably because I love to think about Jesus' movement and the implications for today).
So, this book is written at a serious but popular level and Borg is clear enough when he rejects orthodox positions that I was able to enjoy the read and pick out the bits of value in it. -
I enjoyed Borg's overall point of view in this one, specifically the idea that a life in Christ is about so much more than just believing things that are hard to believe. (Which is wonderful news to the reader who can no longer make a pretense of believing such hard-to-believe things.) Consider this passage:
"The notion that God's only son came to this planet to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and that God could not forgive us without that having happened, and that we are saved by believing this story, is simply incredible. Taken metaphorically, this story can be very powerful. But taken literally, it is a profound obstacle to accepting the Christian message. To many people, it simply makes no sense, and I think we need to be straightforward about that."
I am one of those people to whom it makes no sense, and it was wonderful to hear such a devout and educated Christian voice acknowledge as much.
Borg hits all the right notes where the skeptic is concerned, talking about the lack of historical reliability of the gospels, metaphor over literalism where belief is concerned, and compassion over legalism where practice is concerned.
Yes, I'm still left with the nagging suspicion that progressive theology uses symbol and metaphor as a a life-support system for an obsolete myth, but I guess that's the problem of faith.
This was my first Borg book, and I do look forward to reading more. -
A refreshing and interesting proposition about life with Christ. This biblical scholar simply states a theory about what it means to be Christian. His ideas about compassion and community ring a gong in my mind and heart. His analysis seems very sensible and inspired. I am surprised I was not exposed to these ideas before now though on some level his thinking is a form of confirmation of my own beliefs based on my not scholarly view of faith and Christianity. Thanks to my friend John for lending this book to me and exposing me to these ideas.
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Way over my head for the most part. And didn't like the "Jesus Committee" that decides what Jesus said or didn't say. How can one have a relationship with Jesus, which the author concludes is the most important thing, if you don't believe he really said what is attributed to him in the Bible? There were some good points made though regarding the way we look at Jesus. And I do agree that we need to be more like Jesus and the way he lived, using him as an example for our lives.
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I do not agree with Borg on everything, but there are still some interesting things in this book.
I don't agree with his strong distinction between the "pre-Easter Jesus" and the "post-Easter Christ". Borg is operating from a skepticism that follows from the Jesus Seminar's take on the historical Jesus and historical accuracy of the Gospels
But I really liked the last two chapters of the book:
Chapter 5: Jesus, the Wisdom of God: Sophia Become Flesh
In this chapter Borg connects the language about Sophia/wisdom in the old testament with Jesus. He writes: "the language about Sophia is not simply personification of wisdom in female form, but personification of God in female form. Sophia is a female image for God, a lens through which divine reality is imaged as a woman. In short, the use of Sophia language involves female imagery for speaking of God in the biblical tradition itself."
Borg continues, "The connection to Jesus’ image of God as compassionate, as “like a womb,” is striking. To say that God is like a womb is to say that God is like a woman, just as the personification of God as Sophia suggests that God is like a woman; and Jesus is a spokesperson for the compassion of Sophia/God."
Chapter 6: Images of Jesus and Images of the Christian Life
Borg claims that there are three “macro-stories” at the heart of Scripture that shape the Bible as a whole.
1. The story of the exodus from Egypt
2. The story of the exile and return from Babylon
3. The priestly story regarding the temple, priesthood, and sacrifice.
Much of Western Christianity has placed most or all of the emphasis on the priestly story, which has led to distortions in our understanding of the Christian life. One of these distortions is a "static understanding of the Christian life" where it is an ongoing cycle of sin, guilt, and forgiveness. It also leads to a misunderstanding of Christianity as "primarily a religion of the afterlife", where all that matters is "being right with God before we die: believe now for the sake of salvation later".
I really appreciated his comments on the exodus story and and the exile/return story.
And I really liked one of the last things Borg wrote at the end of the book:
"Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit" (Borg). -
This the second book I have read by Marcus J. Borg. I am a fan! He challenges Christians to move beyond a fideistic image of Jesus as the divine savior and a moralistic image of Jesus as teacher. Instead he proclaims that Christian life is "ultimately not about believing or about being good." Rather, it is about "a relationship with God that involves us in a journey of transformation."
Borg, who was raised a Lutheran and is an influential leader of the group of Biblical scholars known as the Jesus Seminar, uses illustrative material from his own spiritual autobiography to show how an individual's faith can keep evolving. With four bold strokes, he describes his renewed vision of the the historical Jesus. He was a spirit person who saw himself as a mediator of the sacred. He was a subversive teacher of wisdom using parables and aphorisms to jolt individuals into a fresh awareness of God. He was a prophet who criticized the social elites of his day. And he was a movement founder "who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew."
These startling images of the pre-Easter Jesus have some profound implications for the life of the contemporary Christian church. Meeting Jesus as a spirit person should enable believers to easily share their experiences of God with spiritual seekers of other traditions. Borg's laser-sharp discussion of Jesus's understanding of compassion as "the central quality of God and the central moral quality of a life centered in God" opens the door for greater dialogue with Buddhists who have been especially attuned to this sacred dimension of life.
Borg also presents a lively assessment of what he calls the three macro-stories of Scripture — the Exodus story, the story of exile and return, and the priestly story. These were used by the early church to shed light on Jesus's ministry. They have ample fire power for our time as well. Borg suggests regarding them as a "pastoral 'tool kit,' each addressing a different dimension of the human condition."
The final image Borg dissects is seeing both the story of Jesus and the Christian life as a journey of transformation. There is no resting spot, only a relationship with God that becomes richer and fuller as one travels along life's pathways. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is a breath of fresh air in the musty halls of Christian scholarship. It offers salutary new options for discipleship and dialogue in this era of revved-up spirituality.
Favorite Quotes
“For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue: it was a social paradigm, the core value for life in community. To put it boldly: compassion for Jesus was political.”
“His own self-understanding did not include thinking and speaking of himself as the Son of God whose historical intention or purpose was to die for the sins of the world, and his message was not about believing in him. Rather, he was a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion.” -
I’m sure a strongly religious or academic theologian would have gotten much more out of this book than I did as a lay person. I had heard it was readable but unfortunately I found it took a much deeper understanding of religious matters than the average reader has. For instance: “Such experiences radically subvert social boundaries and culturally generated distinctions by exposing their artificiality and disclosing the ‘is-ness’ that lies beneath the socially constructed maps of reality we erect.” I could eventually puzzle that out, but it takes a lot of thought, and when the whole book is written that way (passage selected by opening to a random page) the reader risks missing the important messages in the book. The redeeming fact is that there ARE important messages and I took many notes on thought-provoking matters. I’d rather not comment on specifics I gained from reading the book, as it’s likely different readers would have different takeaways. I’d just say if you want to examine the foundations of your personal religious beliefs this book is likely to inspire some thoughts, but approach it from the aspect of religious study and discussion.
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Interesting book although a lot of it was material I had encountered before. I studied under a fellow member of the Jesus Seminar so that perhaps explains why most of the ideas represented in the book seemed familiar.
I would not recommend the next to a non-christian looking for academic New Testament texts, as the target audience is clearly a member or perhaps lapsed member of the faith. Rather I would recommend it to open minded christians interested in a more academic reading of the new testament -
This is the book I needed when I first started questioning the Jesus I was taught by evangelicalism. Without this resource, I pursued my own scholarship on the historical Jesus versus the Christian Jesus. Having come to my own conclusions, Borg provided affirmation of what I had already discovered. It was comforting and illuminating and I'm so glad I finally made the time to read this permission-granting book.
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A must-read for every curious Christian and anyone else intrigued by Jesus.
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I had hoped this book would be a thought-provoking examination of the Jesus of history vs. the Jesus of faith, but it's far too brief to adequately cover that topic, and it attempts to branch out to cover the biblical narrative as a whole, which overextends it considerably.
Borg's major premise is that there is a considerable difference between what he calls the "Pre-Easter Jesus" (the man who really existed) and the "Post-Easter Jesus" (the character built up by the early Christian church as its dogma and doctrines began to take shape), and that understanding both sides is vital to developing an honest and fulfilling relationship with Jesus. On this broad point, I agree with him completely.
My problem arises when Borg attempts to separate these two aspects of Jesus. He bases his work largely on the Jesus Seminar, in which scholars voted on the likelihood of Jesus having actually spoken the various sayings attributed to him. While the results of this "history by consensus" approach might well create a portrait of the man worth pondering, I fail to see how that portrait is more reliable than the one formed by a straightforward reading of the gospels. Either might be completely right or completely wrong. A reader can have faith in the scribes or in the scholars (or both), but neither has any greater claim to reality. And Borg is not even consistent with agreeing with his sources. If he is uncomfortable with Jesus having said something, he will simply assume Jesus didn't say it. That's fine for him, but he shouldn't be foisting that view onto readers as anything but his own opinion.
At one point, Borg states that "What one cannot imagine is 'Consider the birds ... consider the lilies ...,' immediately followed by 'Judge not, that you be not judged,' immediately followed by 'Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye,' immediately followed by 'Do not give dogs what is holy,' and so forth, as Matthew has it." Well, Marcus J. Borg, this has not only been imagined, but portrayed, without any significant difficulty, for millennia. YOU might have a problem imagining it, and that portrayal might well be completely wrong, but you cannot honestly claim your doubts to be universal.
Borg also gets into trouble when he attempts to make references outside his area of scholarship. At one point, his characterization of longing in exile includes a reference to "E.T.": "Those of us who saw the movie can remember the poignancy of the little green extraterrestrial pointing his finger at the sky and saying in a haunting voice filled with prolonged yearning, 'Home.'" Of course, those of us who actually saw "E.T" remember that the extraterrestrial was NOT green at all, and would expect a scholar whose reputation is built on finding the historical truth in a popular figure to fact-check a widely known and easily verifiable reference.
On a personal note, Borg's very frequent use of the word "image" as a verb makes my skin crawl. Although it is not grammatically incorrect, how often have you heard or read anyone using the word that way? And this is the word he uses almost exclusively for the action he is presenting, rather than any of the numerous synonyms -- describes, portrays, imagines, understands, etc. -- that would have served.
In all, there are a number of intriguing ideas presented here, but they deserve better treatment. This book might serve as an overview text for a college class with ample supporting resources, but I wouldn't recommend it for the casual reader. -
This book involves intelligent and thought-provoking discussion of new biblical scholarship and its ramifications on our relationship with both the historical and metaphorical Jesus. Borg's personal journey of naivety to agnosticism bordering on atheism to mature Christianity resonates deeply with me. Learning about the scholarship and search for truth behind the historical person (and the stories told about him) of Jesus actually is reassuring, not faith-destroying. The need for critical examination of the texts in their appropriate contexts in history and in the Jewish dialogue actually opens up Jesus' message of wisdom and compassion in a way that a purely literal, rote reading of the Bible cannot touch. While I don't agree wholeheartedly with all of Borg's arguments, it's interesting to hear a deeply educated theologian's take to lead me in directions of more discovery.
One of the most compelling arguments Borg made in this book dealt with Jesus' emphasis on compassion and grace. This is evident to me on just my uneducated read of the Bible. Borg's articulation and support of my own reading and understanding with scholarship was eye-opening and breathtaking at times. Jesus' subversion of "common sense" or traditional wisdom of the Jews who were so bound up in the purity system is very familiar today. Justification by works (though NEVER using that verboten terminology) is inconsistent with the message of grace and compassion that Jesus focused on.
I also enjoyed the discussion of "Sophia" - the (female!!) Wisdom of God, personified in the literature of both the Old and New Testaments, and made flesh in Jesus himself. The discussion of Sophia makes me look at the Proverbs 31 woman very differently, just as a start. I'm going to have to explore this more deeply later.
The last chapter, speaking of our loss of the Bible as a group of stories, spoke straight to the English major in me. Yes, yes, yes! The different major themes echoed over and over in Christology are important. It IS clear that the Priestly view of Christ isn't meant to be the only view. The section about how Hebrews is using the priestly story to subvert the priestly story, but then through a lack of context unfortunately establishing a different priestly story made Hebrews actually make SENSE to me for the first time.
Stories we've been told to swallow without critical thinking and questioning are actually paths to the death of faith. If we MUST believe in Jesus the way others do, some of us just may as well stop right there. I know my brain will not allow me to renounce all logic and knowledge of metaphorical language while reading scripture. The good news is that believing in Jesus doesn't have to mean believing in stories about Jesus simply because you're scared if you don't believe those stories, then you're not going to make it to the afterlife. Believing in Jesus can instead be a path to a transformative life centered on compassion, and a first-hand relationship with a loving and wise God. -
GOD SAVE US FROM ACADEMICS ATTEMPTING TO WRITE FOR THE MASSES. I received this book for Christmas...a year? two years? SOMETIME ago, as part of my laundry list of books I needed to read to Be A Decent Adult Christian. I decided to read the whole thing for Lent last year as a personal effort to like, Be A Decent Adult Christian During Lent. I read like 2/3rds of it and put it down. Well, New Lent, New Me, decided to finish it before this year's Lent so I could read something else and not have failure hanging over my head. Just blasted through the last third tonight.
I am sure Marcus J. Borg is a very smart man. You can tell he is, because he writes fluently about books that sound very complicated. His end notes are extensive. He is trying very hard to convey information and sometimes he does. Some of this book is very Jesus 101. Some of this book is very interesting. Some of this book is baffling.
Unfortunately, MOST if not ALL of this book is written in such a way as to be so MIND-NUMBINGLY DULL that I couldn't even focus half the time on what he is saying. Rosemary Radford Ruether calls this book "highly readable". Look, either this book is highly NOT readable or I'm too stupid to be a Christian. Probably it's a little bit of both. But if Borg is trying to tell me something important, most of it is getting lost in translation.
2 stars because the Pre-Easter/Post-Easter Jesus stuff was interesting enough. -
A fresh interpretation of the historical Jesus, written for a general audience by a leading Biblical scholar. This book is a superb introduction to an important current in modern Christology. Is an accessible, lucidly argued examination of the life and message of Jesus - and the implications that this new understanding of him has on Christian theology and ethics. Borg sees Jesus as a "spirit person", a man in close communion with God, a man centered on God, powerfully incarnating the divine compassion, displaying it in his life and his relationships, but a man who did not think of himself as God. This is obviously not the Chalcedonian understanding of the nature of Christ, but Borg is so discrete, so respectful of orthodoxy, so non-polemical in his argument, that his questioning of the Trinity, his criticism of traditional Christology, does not seem radical. His portrait of Jesus as a man, as fully human, seems a much more honest, more coherent, believable conception of Jesus, one that is worth serious consideration, if not total acceptance. And Borg makes a persuasive argument for this view of Jesus - for a Christianity spiritually centered on God, for a faith community in which each member strives to incarnate God's compassion as fully as Jesus did - to incarnate an inclusive, accepting love towards all. Course, this is certainly not "The Old Time Religion", but it may be, as Borg argues, what Jesus actually taught - might be his original message. This view of Jesus, not as God come to earth, but as a "spirit person, this emphasis on the ability of all men to incarnate the divine attribute of compassion, does have its advantages. A non-trinitarian Jesus might facilitate Christianity's acceptability to modern minds. And giving up the exclusive salvitic claims of Christianity might open a path to ecumenical dialogue with other faith traditions, to the wider non-Western world. And focusing on the message of compassion, on love, rather than searching the skies looking for the Son of Man returning on a cloud of glory, might actually further the kingdom of God - here and now. The end of Chalcedon does not mean the end of Christianity - it might signal renewal.
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This is the first book of Borg's I've read, and promptly ordered three more before I even finished.
Borg discusses the "Historical Jesus" which, while certainly not a new topic in religious studies, has gained some steam in the past few years.
It's worth noting that if you're a believer in the Bible as the inerrant, literal word of God - this book may not be for you (but all the more reason you should read it.) But if you want a deeper understanding of what and who Jesus was - this is an excellent book to start with.
For those of us who've spent a lot of time in the study of religion the idea that the New Testament is not a-historical (in that it did not just came about whole and unique) but rather came from the forces at work in the early Christian church that had to understand the Jesus of their history with what they had come to understand about Jesus. And a great deal of that was probably not what Jesus actually taught.
Borg's book goes into what Jesus DID probably teach using modern critical text analysis as well a respect for the material Borg discusses the pre-Easter (living, historical Jesus) in great and sympathetic detail. Borg paints a picture of a Jesus who was a rebel to the existing social system and deeply concerned with God's compassion towards mankind. In Borg's Christianity the central story is the Prodigal Son.
I'm not a Christian, but I can sympathize with that vision of God. -
This book proved very helpful in gaining a different understanding of Jesus from a scholarly point-of-view versus the typical mainstream beliefs. I especially appreciated Borg's discussion on translations, offering an improved way of grasping the original Hebrew language set in the context of the times, and also his breakdown of the 3 macro-stories of the bible: the Exodus, the Exile, and the priestly narrative.
What I probably liked even more was how well the work is cited throughout, providing me plenty of opportunity to expand on these subjects and to learn what perspectives other authors and scholars added to these and related subjects.
This book could not have come to me at a more important point in my own spiritual journey. Understanding Jesus as a subversive who went up against the conventional wisdom and purity system/hierarchies of his day provides a very interesting illustration of who he actually was, made all the more important when considered in light of what we still have going on in modern times. Not much has really changed when we stop and think about it, as Borg helps us to do. Even Christianity, as a general movement, has reverted over time to doing the very things the Jewish system of Jesus' time was guilty of, providing us with much food for thought going forward, especially for those feeling alienated and wondering where we might go from here.
I am interested in reading more from Marcus Borg. -
I really enjoyed this book. I have grown up within the Catholic church and like many Christians, have heard the Gospel stories so many times that I often think very little about them except that they are just another part of my life that I have grown up with hearing. This book completely opened my eyes to a different understanding of Jesus and the times he lived in. Having both Jesus and the Gospels talked about contextually, made everything seem new and made so much more sense to me. I always knew Jesus was a radical man, addressing what he saw as an unjust system. This book really lays out the purity system and what it meant to those who lived during its cultural dominance. Moreover, this book also made many gospel stories more understandble by laying out just what was going on within society at that point in time.
Besides adding a much needed, often not discussed, context to the time of Jesus, I feel that Borg also did a great job of getting at what he felt was the heart of Jesus' teachings. I know there will be many who read this book and have a lot of issues with it, but it really spoke to me and I am very glad I came across it. One of the many things that blew me away about this book is that it was written over 20 years ago, but you would never know it by the topics Borg addresses; I'd swear it was writtten last year.
