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979689a
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The first phrase affirms "God so loved the world"--not Christians in particular, or the elect, or the church, but the world. God's passion is the world. Christians have often been fearful of loving the world, for they have sometimes confused it with "worldliness." But loving the world doesn't mean getting lost in the world. It means loving the world--the creation--as God loves the world."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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23bfc6b
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When I was a young college teacher in my mid-twenties, an older colleague delighted in characterizing post-Enlightenment theology as "flat-tire theology"--"All the pneuma has gone out of it."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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1c554b5
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rather than God being "out there" in the heights, God is known in the depths of personal experience."
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philosophy
religion
spirituality
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Marcus J. Borg |
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3df5d42
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Resurrection" does not mean resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence."
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philosophy
religion
spirituality
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Marcus J. Borg |
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142dc4c
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Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually, nationally and internationally.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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18c7339
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an introduction to Christian pluralism and the intellectual riches of the Christian tradition, but also to intellectual pluralism. I realized that there were no definitely settled ways of seeing life--of what is, what is real, and how, then, we should live. The notion that there was one "right" way of seeing things disappeared. This was enormously liberating, even if a bit alarming. But my curiosity was greater than my fear."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d9823c6
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theological objections to an emphasis on an afterlife are about how such an emphasis affects Christianity. Note the word emphasis. My claim is not that believing in an afterlife intrinsically produces these results. Rather, I am describing what happens when the afterlife is emphasized in Christian preaching, teaching, and evangelism. It seriously distorts what Christianity is about and what it means to be Christian. It does this in several ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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fac99dd
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Stories can be true without being literally and factually true.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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f607fcb
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Indeed, for Christians, the unending conversation about Jesus is the most important conversation there is. He is for us the decisive revelation of God--of what can be seen of God's character and passion in a human life. There are other important conversations. But for followers of Jesus, the unending conversation about Jesus is the conversation that matters most.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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8182347
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The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus's dying for our sins, and believing.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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89f931a
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about? What's salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: "it"--Christianity and salvation--is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginning in childhood, is that we fall into bondage to cultural messages and conventions; experience separation and exile from the one in whom we live and move and have our being; become blinded by habituated ways of seeing and live in the dark,..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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266bdd9
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To believe in a person is quite different from believing that a series of statements about the person are true.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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53b88ad
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This vision of life is deeply centered in God, the sacred. So it was for Jesus. So it is in all of the enduring religions of the world. What makes Christianity Christian is centering in God as known in Jesus.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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ef9b814
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Two transformations are at the center of this life. For want of better language, I call them the personal and the political. The Christian life is about personal transformation into the likeness of Christ (from one degree to another, as Paul puts it); and it is about participation in God's passion for the kingdom of God. The personal and the political are brought together in "the way of the cross"--an image of personal transformation and co..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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c6a08a6
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In function, Jesus's aphorisms are very much like his parables--provocative and invitational forms of speech. They provoke thought, lead people to reconsider their taken-for-granted assumptions, and invite them to see life differently.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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44a569b
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One scenario begins by imagining that Jesus heals somebody in a village. What is the likely response, beyond amazement and gratitude? He (and those with him) would be invited to a meal. It is the classic ancient way of expressing gratitude and hospitality.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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32e7a7e
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To state the obvious, how we see is to a large extent the product of what we have seen.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d809074
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Christians also speak of the Bible as the revelation of God, indeed as the "Word of God." Yet orthodox Christian theology from ancient times has affirmed that the decisive revelation of God is Jesus. The Bible is "the Word" become words, God's revelation in human words; Jesus is "the Word" become flesh, God's revelation in a human life. Thus Jesus is more decisive than the Bible." --
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Marcus J. Borg |
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9684aa2
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Because modern critical thinking is corrosive of conventional religious beliefs, some Christians reject applying it to the Bible and Christianity. The result is fundamentalism and much of conservative Christianity, which holds that regardless of the claims of modern knowledge, the Bible and Christianity are true--and not just true, but factually true.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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2e5621e
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The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns once again, and always worse than before. And it is that escalator violence that then endangers our world.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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4a7c907
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We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually, nationally and internationally.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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b711a12
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The focus of a politics of compassion is the alleviation of suffering caused by social structures.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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95db0e3
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The word "sacrament" also has a broader meaning. In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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7f25761
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The point: only a small minority of Christians and for only a brief period of time have taught biblical inerrancy and the sole authority of the Bible. So how and why has it become "orthodox" Christianity for about half of American Protestants?"
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Marcus J. Borg |
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9958776
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Images of Jesus give content to what loyalty to him means. The popular picture of Jesus as one whose purpose was to proclaim truths about himself most often construes loyalty to him as insistence on the truth of those claims. Loyalty becomes belief in the historical truthfulness of all the statements in the gospels. Discipleship is then easily confused with dogmatism or doctrinal orthodoxy. The absence of an image - the most common fruit of..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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36ad510
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God's dream for us is not simply peace of mind, but peace on earth.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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1d831cc
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Importantly, the issue as we describe the wealthy and powerful is not whether they--in our case, the Jerusalem authorities centered in the temple--were "corrupt," if by that we mean an individual failing. As individuals, the wealthy and powerful can be good people--responsible, honest, hard-working, faithful to family and friends, interesting, charming, and good-hearted. The issue is not their individual virtue or wickedness, but the role t..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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b6fc5c3
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God has always been in relationship to us, journeying with us, and yearning to be known by us.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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3149fe7
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A poem by Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, captures the ache of loss at the end of childhood. Its title is significant: "On Turning Ten": The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chickenpox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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1a58a62
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As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them; so would I learn to attain free fall and float into Creator Spirit's deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace.3
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Marcus J. Borg |
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ebc1cfe
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The pre-Easter Jesus is dead and gone; he's nowhere anymore. This statement does not deny Easter in any way, but simply recognizes that the corpuscular Jesus, the flesh-and-blood Jesus, is a figure of the past.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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88b4c39
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To shift to a voice metaphor, the gospels contain two voices: the voice of Jesus and the voice of the community. Both layers and voices are important. The former tell us about the pre-Easter Jesus; the latter are the witness and testimony of the community to what Jesus had become in their experience in the decades after Easter.5
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Marcus J. Borg |
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6418993
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He points beyond himself to God--to God's character and passion. This is the meaning of our christological language and our credal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God, the heart of God. He is both metaphor and sacrament of God.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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b3a36b1
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One must die to an old way of being in order to enter a new way of being... salvation is resurrection to a new way of being here and now.
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philosophy
religion
spirituality
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Marcus J. Borg |
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b1322b1
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The relationship among faith, knowledge, and belief is suggested by a story involving the famous depth psychologist Carl Jung. In the last year of his life, he was interviewed for a BBC television documentary. The interviewer asked him, "Dr. Jung, do you believe in God?" Jung said, "Believe? I do not believe in God - I know." The point: the more one knows God, the less faith as belief is involved. But faith as belief still has a role: it ca..
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philosophy
religion
spirituality
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Marcus J. Borg |
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6d003ba
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a new teaching appointment required that I become familiar with mysticism in Christianity and other religions. That's when I realized that these were mystical experiences. Especially important was William James's classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience, published more than a century ago, still in print, and named by a panel of experts in 1999 as the second most important nonfiction book published in English in the twentieth centu..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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87c77d2
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And here I return to Christianity. Why be a Christian in the twenty-first century? Because it gives us a vision. And a hope. And a way. The language of the New Testament talks about the "kingdom of God." Which is here, now. Which is what this world would be like if God was kind and Caesar was not. The vision of Christianity for a just, sane, nonviolent world is not utopian. It is within our capacity. And such capacity requires that we take ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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b4ab9ba
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recognize that labels risk becoming stereotypes and caricatures; indeed, the difference between "label" and "libel" is a single letter. Yet they can be useful and even necessary shorthand for naming differences. Aware of this danger, I suggest five categories for naming the divisions in American Christianity today: conservative, conventional, uncertain, former, and progressive Christians. In somewhat different forms, these kinds of Christia..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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0ef637a
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Faithfulness leads us to pay attention to our relationship to God--through such attention, we become even more deeply centered in God. Trust is the fruit of that deeper centering. It grows as we center more and more in God.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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4ea80f5
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And here I return to Christianity. Why be a Christian in the twenty-first century? Because it gives us a vision. And a hope. And a way. The language of the New Testament talks about the "kingdom of God." Which is here, now. Which is what this world would be like if God was king and Caesar was not. The vision of Christianity for a just, sane, nonviolent world is not utopian. It is within our capacity. And such capacity requires that we take ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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bfa22ee
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What's it all about, Alfie?" Its lyrics are not particularly profound, but the question has stayed with me. What's it all about? What's life all about? What's Christianity all about? What's salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: "it"--Christianity and salvation--is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginning in childhood, is that we fall into bondage to cultural messa..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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e3e6916
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Biblical inerrancy and the absolute authority of the Bible are thus a post-Reformation Protestant development. The first time the Bible was described as "inerrant" and "infallible" was in a book of Protestant theology written in the second half of the 1600s. Widespread affirmation of biblical inerrancy is even more recent, largely the product of the past one hundred years." --
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Marcus J. Borg |
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8daae53
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Faith does not mean believing in the literal-factuality of the stories regardless of how improbable they seem. Rather, faith is about something far more important. It is about our relationship with God--about centering in God, being loyal (faithful) to God, and about trusting in God. Faith is the opposite of hubris and anxiety.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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e37e66d
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God may or may not be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but the cultural context in which we speak about God does change.
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Marcus J. Borg |