|
e26cab9
|
In its Lutheran form, despite the emphasis upon God's grace, "justification by grace through faith" was heard as "justification by faith" and thus as involving a fearful form of works righteousness: the "work" was "to believe." Faith meant believing in a correct set of doctrines (which happened to be Lutheran), and this was the gateway to salvation. What"
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
5ac2a0c
|
Jesus (as well as the authors of the gospels) would have known about Rome's policy of sending reinforcements to the city at Passover. His decision to enter the city as he did was what we would call a planned political demonstration, a counterdemonstration. The juxtaposition of these two processions embodies the central conflict of Jesus's last week: the kingdom of God or the kingdom of imperial domination. What Christians have often spoken ..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
d76856a
|
So when Paul and other early Christians proclaimed "Jesus is Lord" (and the Son of God and the savior who brings true peace on earth), he and they were directly challenging Roman imperial theology and the imperial domination system that it legitimated."
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
d88d54f
|
Compassion in the Bible has rich resonances of meaning. It is linguistically related to the Hebrew and Aramaic word for "womb" and sometimes refers to what a mother feels for the children of her womb.5 Thus naming "compassion" as God's primary quality means that God, like a mother, is "womb-like": life-giving, nourishing, willing the well-being of her children, and desiring our maturation. So also we are to be like that: centering in God th..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
d77d546
|
Theological controversies over the centuries have sometimes been treated as if they were really important even though they were also often arcane. For instance, a Trinitarian conflict split the Western and Eastern churches in 1054: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, or from the Father only? In the 1600s, "supralapsarianism" versus "infralapsarianism" almost divided the Reformed tradition. At issue was whether God deci..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
79d1d95
|
But then something went terribly, terribly wrong. Athens had invented a democracy, but learned that you could have a democracy or an empire, but not both at the same time for long. Rome was now about to relearn that lesson. It had invented a republic, but was now to learn that you could have a republic or an empire, but not both at the same time for long.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
7765cc1
|
It had never occurred to me that what we call "God" could be experienced. For me, the word had referred to a being who might or might not exist, and in whom one could believe or disbelieve or about whom one could remain uncertain. But I realized there is a cloud of witnesses, Christian and non-Christian, for whom God, the sacred, is real, an element of experience, not a hypothetical being who may or may not exist and whom we can only believ..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
6fdd053
|
Progressive Christianity is about both negation and affirmation. It rejects biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation, and the beliefs that Jesus died to pay for our sins and that Christianity is the only way of salvation. Thus progressive Christians are often better known for what they do not believe than for what they do affirm. This is not surprising: to a large extent, progressive Christianity has emerged as a "no" to the conventional ..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
44e2116
|
I am convinced that salvation in the biblical tradition has to do primarily with this life.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
520a0b4
|
The foundation of this way of seeing the Bible begins with the conviction that it is not the inerrant and infallible revelation of God, but the product of our religious ancestors in two ancient communities. The Old Testament comes to us from our ancestors in biblical Israel. The New Testament comes to us from our ancestors in early Christian communities. As such, the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw thin..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
df117da
|
The Politics of the Bible The key to seeing the political passion of the Bible is hearing and understanding its primary voices in their ancient historical contexts. These contexts are not only literary, but also political. The political context of the Bible is "the ancient domination system," sometimes also called "the premodern domination system." Both phrases are used in historical scholarship for the way "this world"--the humanly created..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
067c60b
|
My answer, the answer pointed to by this chapter, is that our product is salvation as the twofold transformation of ourselves and the world. Moreover, I think most people yearn for this. We yearn for the transformation of our lives--for a fuller connection to what is, from liberation to all that keeps us in bondage, for sight, for wholeness, for the healing of the wounds of existence. And most of us yearn for a world that is a better place...
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
1d0b5e9
|
how we see reality and our ability to trust are connected to each other.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
2abdd75
|
The sacrifice that Christianity asks of us is not ultimately a sacrifice of the intellect.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
ea73216
|
This relationship with God, and all that flows from it, are the purpose of the Christian life. The invitation of the Christian gospel is to enter into that relationship in which our healing and wholeness lie, that relationship which transforms us by beginning to heal the wounds of existence and makes our lives in the here and now a life with God.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
8e58ff8
|
Critical thinking is an unavoidable part of growing up. We do not become adults without it. But in the modern world, this stage often corrodes religious belief. Modern Western ways of thinking are very much shaped by the identification of truth with factuality. And generally accepted modern knowledge calls into question the factuality of much of the Bible and of religions more generally.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
25e7b8e
|
the spirit of industrial society"--a way of living organized around production and consumption.7 Our modern preoccupation with producing and consuming leads us to live on the surface level of reality and to seek our satisfaction in the finite. But the sacred is known in the depths of reality, not in the manipulation and consumption of the surface." --
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
37457d4
|
These questions can be used by individual readers and also in reading groups in which participants are invited to share their memories and thoughts. Many of them invite reflection on previous or current understandings and are best used before treating the content of the relevant chapter. Some invite reflection about material in a particular chapter.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
4dc34f1
|
The Roman vision incarnated in the divine Augustus was peace through victory. The Christian vision incarnated in the divine Jesus was peace through justice. It is those alternatives that are at stake behind all the titles and countertitles, the claims and counterclaims.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
595846a
|
Fundamentalism itself--whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim--is modern. It is a reaction to modern culture.7 Christian fundamentalism as an identifiable religious movement originated early in the twentieth century in the United States, with its immediate roots in the second half of the nineteenth century.8 It stressed the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible in every respect, especially against Darwinism and what it called "the higher c..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
5aa8e5e
|
But Easter means that the powers of this world do not have the last word.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
da30468
|
the story of Jesus is thus a story of God and us. This does not mean, of course, that the historical Jesus was God. But because the completed story affirms that God was present in and through Jesus, the story of Jesus becomes a disclosure of God, the revelation and epiphany of God. As a
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
d9c1bdd
|
A third reason was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter; namely, passages from letters attributed to Paul endorse slavery, subordinate women, and condemn homosexual behavior. They have been used for much of Christian history to justify systems of oppression. As
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
66c3d52
|
Thus Paul has been used to support systems of cultural conventions oppressive to more than half of the human race. No wonder slaves, women, gays and lesbians, and those who care about them have often found Paul appalling.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
5f02b83
|
Rather than God being the lawgiver and judge whose requirements must be met and whose justice must be satisfied, God is the lover who yearns to be in relationship to us. Rather than sin and guilt being the central dynamic of the Christian life, the central dynamic becomes relationship--with God, the world, and each other. The Christian life is about turning toward and entering into relationship with the one who is already in relationship wi..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
d45de49
|
What was going on at the time? What were the circumstances that the author addressed? What did the author's words and allusions mean in their ancient historical and literary setting? Without context, one can imagine that a text means almost anything.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
ee998e2
|
Thus, in a narrower sense, the dream of God is a social and political vision of a world of justice and peace in which human beings do not hurt or destroy, oppress or exploit one another.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
51876ea
|
Christians in this country (and elsewhere) are deeply divided by different understandings of a shared language. About half (maybe more) of American Christians believe that biblical language is to be understood literally within a heaven-and-hell framework that emphasizes the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and believing. The other half (maybe less) puzzle over and have problems with this. Some have moved on to anoth..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
1b35ecd
|
So the issue is not character flaws among the elites. The issue, rather, is a system in which some people sleep on beds made of ivory while others end up being sold for the price of a pair of sandals.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
866413e
|
The passion for social justice that we see in the prophets is a protest against systemic evil. Systemic evil is an important notion: it refers to the injustice built into the structures of the system itself.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
0aba3f6
|
The pre-Easter Jesus is the historical Jesus. This Jesus is a figure of the past, a finite mortal human being born around the year 4 B.C.E. In his early thirties, after one to three years of public activity, he was executed by Roman authority (most likely in the year 30 C.E.). That Jesus--the flesh-and-blood Galilean Jewish peasant of the first century--is no more.6 The post-Easter Jesus is what Jesus became after his death. More specifical..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
a38adf2
|
As the biblical vision of a domination-free order, the dream of God, the kingdom of God on earth, what does a politics of compassion imply for Christian perception of and relationship to the social order? It leads to seeing the impact of social structures on people's lives. It leads to seeing that the economic suffering of the poor is not primarily due to individual failure. It leads to seeing that the categories of "marginal," "inferior," ..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
5017afe
|
It is a life of deep commitment and gentle certitude. Deep commitment, because it involves one's whole being. Gentle certitude, because it is gentle, soft, regarding particular verbal formulations of Christianity, including precise doctrinal statements. These are always human products. They are to be valued as such and to be reformulated when necessary. Depth of commitment and dogmatic certainty about a particular set of beliefs are not the..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
c00c0f7
|
Cumulatively, taking the pre-Easter Jesus seriously as an epiphany of God suggests a massive subversion of the monarchical model of God and the way of life (individually and socially) to which it leads. God is not a distant being but is near at hand. God is not primarily a lawgiver and judge but the compassionate one. The religious life is not about requirements but about relationship.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
1707e50
|
These two visions of Christianity--one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God's passion for the transformation of this world--are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood--whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framewor..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
e5579b9
|
Even more striking and revealing is how he interweaves "sons of God" twice in Romans 8:14, 19 with "children of God" twice in Romans 8:16, 21--and again in Romans 9:8. It is, for Paul, all about family values--but divine family values, and that is what makes him very, very radical." --
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
805ecbd
|
The notions of biblical infallibility and inerrancy first appeared in the 1600s, and became insistently affirmed by some Protestants only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
42d1a74
|
W]e pray that [this domination-free order] - God's kingdom - might come on earth every time we pray the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." But we often miss the connection because of the cadence with which we most frequently pray this prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" is separated by a single-beat pause from "on earth, as it is in heaven." But the syntax is clear: we are praying for t..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
dd3af8f
|
American Christians need especially to see the political meanings of these stories, for we live in a time of the American empire.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
9182575
|
empire is not intrinsically about geographical expansion and territorial acquisition. As a nation, that is not our aim. Rather, empire is about the use of superior power--military, political, and economic--to shape the world as the empire sees fit. In this sense, we are the new Rome.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
9fb4485
|
Are we among those who yearn for the coming of the kingdom of justice and peace, who seek peace through justice? Or do we, like advocates of imperial theology, seek peace through victory? Where do we see the light of the world? Is America, the American empire, the light shining in the darkness? Jim Wallis, in his important book God's Politics, reports that our president on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 2001 spo..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
11d8fd6
|
Advent and Christmas are about a new world. They are thus intrinsically about eschatology. Recall what we said about this word in Chapter 3: eschatology is about the divine transformation of our earth. It is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather, it is about the end of this era of war and violence, injustice, and oppression. It is about the earth's transformation, not about its devastation. It is ab..
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
8b0bcf4
|
We do not need to choose between them. Our understanding of Jesus' significance is richer if we see and affirm both the historical Jesus and the canonical Jesus. Both the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus are the image of the invisible God. Both disclose what God is like.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
ac2d9a9
|
we are to participate with God in bringing about the world promised by Christmas.
|
|
|
Marcus J. Borg |