A couple of months ago I was asked if I had read any of Marcus Borg's books. I had read "The Meaning of Jesus" which is a back and forth between NT Wright and Borg but had never read any of Borg's 'solo' works. So when a friend and colleague put a copy of "The Heart of Christianity" in my hand I was delighted to read it. Now I've been asked to write about what I thought of it. Let me be clear, there is no way I can fully engage all of Borg's thoughts here, it would take a book to respond but I do want to focus on a couple of things he says that I believe are of critical importance for the church.
First of all I want to be clear that I hear in Borg a deep concern for the future of Christianity and it is out of this concern that he writes. As Borg states, the classical theological historical, "image of Jesus no longer works for millions of people, both within and outside the church. For these millions, its literalism and exclusivity are not only unpersuasive, but a barrier to being a Christian.
There are, of course, also millions of Christians who still see Jesus this way. But for people who can't accept the older image, the historical-metaphorical approach to Jesus and Christian origins provides a way to take Jesus seriously."
This presents the question as to whether Borg, in his attempt to remove barriers, has in fact removed some of the central elements of what it means to be Christian. Has Borg become a heretic?
As Alister McGrath explains heresy, "Heresy is best seen as a form of Christian belief that, more by accident than design, ultimately ends up subverting, destabilizing, or even destroying the Christian faith." And, "Heresy lies in the shadow lands of faith, a failed attempt at orthodoxy whose intentions are likely to have been honorable but whose outcomes were eventually discovered to be [corrosive]." You might as well know my conclusion is that Borg's work is, in the best sense, heresy. To understand why I reach this conclusion you'll have to read on.
I have no argument with Borg when he asserts that being a Christian requires certain affirmations, "being a Christian means affirming the reality of God." "Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus" and "Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible."
For the purposes of what is now becoming an essay rather than a blog post, I'm going to limit my comments to the person and work of Jesus. In particular to the resurrection of Jesus and the purpose of Christ's work on the cross.
Borg speaks of a pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus both of which he says are essential for our faith, but how does Borg make the distinction? The pre-Easter Jesus was a Jewish mystic, a healer, a wisdom teacher, a social prophet and a movement initiator. All of which I think most historically orthodox Christians could affirm.
However there is no mention in the pre-Easter depiction of Jesus that Jesus was indeed God incarnate in the classic sense of being "eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and our salvation he came down from heaven... and became truly human..." No, for Borg Jesus "is not different in kind from us but as completely human as we are. In the fully human life of this utterly remarkable Spirit person, we see the incarnation of God." (p.148 The Meaning Of Jesus) There is no mention that Jesus saw his identity as being God incarnate and there is no mention that Jesus understood his death on the cross to be central to his purpose.
Indeed Borg goes as far as to deny that Jesus saw himself as God. To do this he has to make a judgment call that those portions of Scripture in which Jesus makes these claims were later edits and that Jesus never actually said them.
"The pre-Easter Jesus is dead and gone; he's nowhere anymore" - Borg
"On the third day he rose again from the dead" - Apostle's Creed
For Borg the post-Easter Jesus is the Jesus of Christian experience, the post-Easter Jesus is "an experiential reality" rather than an historical reality. In fairness to Borg he really doesn't care about whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, he says its irrelevant, but ultimately he denies a physical resurrection and in doing so puts himself outside the borders of orthodoxy. The question is, does it matter? The answer I believe is absolutely and the gospels, epistles and Christian history attest to this. Without getting into all the details here, one of the earliest attestations to the importance of the resurrection is the apostle Paul, who said, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
In orthodox Christianity there is no division between a pre- and post- Easter Jesus.
As for the centrality of the cross Borg states "no, I don't think that Jesus literally died for our sins. I don't think he thought of his life and purpose that way; I don't think he thought of that as his divinely given vocation." How does Borg then deal with those passages of Scripture that seem to clearly suggest that Jesus and the early church saw the cross as central to his calling and purpose?
Borg also raises what for many is a real issue when he says that the need for the cross, "implies a limitation on God's power to forgive; namely, God can forgive only if adequate sacrifice is made." I disagree, and I like how Miroslav Volf puts it, "herein lies the essence of Christian forgiveness: on account of his divinity Christ could and did shoulder the consequences of human sin; so the penalty for wrongdoing can be detached from wrongdoers. And since on account of his humanity Christ could and did die on behalf of sinners, they, in effect, died when he died; so guilt can be detached from wrongdoers" (p.208 The End of Memory). What Borg fails to account for is that forgiveness is not without cost, anytime someone forgives they bear the cost themselves, if you owe $5 and I forgive you that debt it costs me $5. The cost that God was willing to accept to forgive our sin was death, on the cross God incarnate died.
As Volf also states, "If we view the death of Christ on the cross as a third party being punished for the sins of transgressors, we have widely missed the mark." For Borg Jesus has to be seen as a third party due to his position on the incarnation and misses the mark here.
I know I have barely scratched the surface of the issues here. This is a blog not an academic journal!
When all is said and done it has be said that while Borg's work may provide some helpful insights it is still the voice of a revisionist and there is no need for me or anyone else to put Borg outside the scope of the historic Christian faith, he does that quite knowingly and willingly himself.
If you are a Borg fan I would encourage you to read NT Wright who has dialoged at great length with Borg in a very respectful way. If you are a Borg critic, I hope you've read what you're criticizing and not just setting up a straw man to knock down.
