[Previous entry: "A parent who needs to go back to school"] [Next entry: "Stick to champagne if you're going to pop your cork"]
08/27/2004: "The Borg invades Canada"
Marcus Borg, one of the leading lights of the Jesus Seminar (the in-depth examination of the size of certain academic egos hosted by the Westar Institute), spoke recently in Vancouver. Hilarity resulted:
"Christians are people for whom the relationship with God as known in Jesus is central to their lives," he said. "We agree about that."
"If we agree about that then there might be some room to talk about our disagreements."
Which he proceeded to do:
At present, Borg said, using one of the main themes of his recent book, two visions of Christianity predominate. It's almost as if there were "two different religions."
He's right on the money about that.
Borg labelled these two visions the "earlier paradigm" and the "emerging paradigm." A paradigm he defined as a comprehensive way of seeing a whole.
While Christians who hold these two visions share the "basics" of Christianity, they differ on the details.
For instance, all share a belief in "the reality of God." But those who hold to the earlier vision see God as a supernatural person. Those who accept the emerging vision of Christianity think of God not so much as a person but as the Spirit that encompasses all of Creation (yet is more than Creation).
Christians see Jesus as the "decisive revelation of God." But the disagreement is between those with an earlier vision, who feel Jesus is the only decisive revelation (the Way), and those of the emerging vision, who think Jesus is one of several revelations of God.
Christians in these two camps "share the basics"? In Borg's rendering, they can't even agree with whom (or what) it is that they are supposed to be in relationship. Those with his "emerging vision" have the same kind of "relationship" with the "Spirit" that they have with electricity. Borg "relates" to "God" as an impersonal It, I relate to God as a loving Father. Borg thinks that Jesus reveals I don't know what (can an impersonal force really be said to "reveal" itself? Is what Jesus did in "revealing God" like what Newton did in "revealing" the reality of gravity?), I think Jesus is the personal incarnation of the personal God of Israel. So what exactly are the basics that we share, other than the desire of each to claim the the "Christian"?
Likewise, to all Christians, the Bible is sacred scripture. But is it somehow a "divine product" - the earlier view? Or is it a human product - how the Hebrews and early Christians experienced God, but not necessarily how we do today?
Scripture to Christians is the most important collection of documents they have, and is "foundational." "It helps us figure out what is real, how to live."
But the Bible is not historical in the modern sense of telling us what really happened, Borg said.
I certainly understand how a book can be true and non-historical at the same time. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a true portrayal of life in the Soviet gulag, but that doesn't mean the events it depicts actually happened as Solzhenitsyn describes them. But this of course raises the question: why should the truth that the Bible teaches in a non-historical fashion be any more important to anyone than, say, the works of Dostoyevsky or Dante or Sartre? Why, if it has little or nothing to do with what God has actually done in the life of humanity, should it be "foundational" to anything?
The "earlier" vision or paradigm is not all that old, Borg insisted. It came about three hundred years ago as a response to the Enlightenment. The "emerging" paradigm has actually been emerging from seminaries for the past one hundred years, he said.
God as a personal being is only three hundred years old? The Bible as the story of God's acts of creation and redemption in human history is only three hundred years old? If I were one of Borg's students at Oregon State and heard that he'd said that, I'd demand my tuition back.
Speaking of the disputes between holders of these two paradigms currently taking place in the Church, Borg said:
Bridges can be built, Borg insisted, if Christians talk about their agreements rather than their differences.
We mustn't insist we have the "absolute truth" or fear diversity, he told the audience.
I don't know how bridges are going to be built, differences respected, or anything accomplished if the holders of one paradigm are required ("mustn't") to become holders of the other paradigm in order for dialogue to take place. This kind of fraud–"I really want for us to talk about our differences, but you have to agree to my ground rules, and abandon your most basic beliefs before we can do so, and if you don't, you're causing division in the Body"–grows more tiresome every day.
UPDATE: The Pontificator makes clear that resistence is not futile:
Borg’s ignorance and dismissal of historic creedal Christianity is simply mind-boggling. If the history of Christianity shows anything, it shows that Christians have taken doctrine very, very seriously. Christians have worked hard at distinguishing their belief-system from the belief-systems of pagan religion. Christians have worked hard at formulating authentic Christian doctrine in opposition to beliefs that they have deemed heretical. But guru Borg has the hutzpah to tell us that beliefs are irrelevant to the true religion of Jesus!
Amazingly, Borg really does not see that his “emerging vision” of Christianity isn’t Christianity at all.
Amazingly, Borg really does not see that his “emerging vision” has more in common with the religion of the gnostics and neo-gnostics than with the religion of Irenaeus, Athanasius [that's the original one–ed. :-)], and Thomas Aquinas.
If you haven't read Pontifications before, treat yourself. It's a terrific education.
