Borg & Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two visions

A book review of Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

Over the last two or three decades, there has been an explosion of  books, articles, college courses, and websites devoted to the "search for the historical Jesus." Jesus scholarship has become a big business, and there is far more out there than anyone could ever read or watch let alone master.  It is, furthermore, a, tumultuous and highly contested field with scholars arguing (sometimes vehemently) almost every perspective one could imagine.  There are liberal Jesus scholars and conservative ones, secular Jesus scholars and faithful ones—all pushing their version  of the historical Jesus.

Borg & Wright's The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions is different.  Representing distinct strands in the larger debate, the authors have written a friendly book intended to describe and explore their differences.  They see themselves as being in dialogue, valuing each other's views and disagreeing about them "without being disagreeable."  They transcend thus the usual "my interpretation is the right one" approach of many Jesus scholars and, instead, affirm the fact that there are numerous ways to understand the historical Jesus, all of them incomplete.

The book starts out somewhat slowly with one chapter by each author describing their historical methodology.  The prose is a tad ponderous, especially in Wright's chapter, but even so readers immediately begins to see the distinction between the two.  Both consider themselves faithful Christians and affirm the authority and importance of the Bible.  The issue that divides them is the historical reliability of the four gospels.  For Borg, the gospels are "metaphorized" accounts that reveal more about what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus than factual information concerning Jesus himself.  Wright contends that the gap between the historical Jesus and the gospels is much narrower, and we can largely bridge it by immersing ourselves in the historical context of first century Judaism.  The rest of the book reveals how this central difference between Borg and Wright plays out across a number of key issues.

The Meaning of Jesus is divided into eight parts beginning with methodology and then going on to cover Jesus' teachings and actions, death, resurrection, divinity, birth, second coming, and relationship to the Christian life.  Borg and Wright contribute a chapter to each section, carefully alternating who presents the first chapter.  Borg went first in Part I, so Wright begins Part II, and so it goes: Borg, Wright; Wright, Borg; Borg, Wright; and so forth.  As it works out, Borg gets the first and the last word.

N. T. Wright

Wright tends to be more of the historian, immersed in details and less apt to reach large theological conclusions.  It often feels as if he "beats around the bush," considering the minutiae of the data and making careful limited judgments based on it.  The result is that he seems indecisive, even obscure at points.  In his chapter on the divinity of Jesus (Chapter 10), for example, he never quite brings himself to say, "yes," or "no," or even "maybe." It is clear from all he has written that he does think Jesus was/is divine, but the best he can bring himself to write is that if we start with the Old Testament, "and ask what God might look like were he to become human, you will find that he might look very much like Jesus of Nazareth..." (p. 167).  Similarly, when it comes to the virginal conception of Jesus, Wright never does state whether or not Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus.  He somewhat lamely concludes that if the birth narratives in Luke and Matthew never existed it wouldn't make much difference to the church's faith or to his.  He says, "I hold open my historical judgment and say: if that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?"  He does not say whether or not God did deem a virginal concept "appropriate" or not.

To be fair, in his concluding chapter (Chapter 15) Wright states directly that the events described in the Gospels did happen, otherwise they would not be meaningful.  He uses the example of the Emmaus Road story (Luke 24:13-35).  If it didn't take place, then it isn't true.  For Wright, then, the truth of Jesus is tied to the factual truth of the gospels.

Marcus J. Borg

Borg is the theologian-historian.  Believing that the gap between Jesus and the gospels is generally wide and next to impossible to bridge, Borg is more interested in the metaphorical meanings of the early church's stories about Jesus.  He has no trouble rejecting the historicity of most of the gospels' stories.  Thus, for example, he denies from the beginning of his chapter on the birth narratives (Chapter 12) that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus.  He outlines his reasoning and then returns to the metaphorical truths he sees encased in the stories.  In each of his chapters, Borg seeks out those truths, largely rejecting the historicity of the gospels.  Where Wright generally does not divorce historical factuality from the truth about Jesus, Borg clearly sees Christian truth as resting on a deeper, spiritualized plane where "objective" historical "facts" are of less concern.

In one telling exchange, Borg insists that the "pre-Easter" Jesus would not have thought of himself as being the messiah, let alone divine.  He did not have the mind of God or the power of God as such.  The pre-easter Jesus was an incarnation of God but did not think of himself that way.  To do so would have betrayed in him a mental illness.  Healthy individuals just do not think of themselves as God.  The "post-Easter" Jesus, however, is a divine reality, and is "one with God."  Wright, of course, disagrees and believes that it would have been natural for Jesus to understand himself as the messiah.  Other Jewish figures before him had thought of themselves that way.  We cannot, Wright argues, rely on modern psychology to understand Jesus' frame of mind or self-understanding in the first century.  Where Borg thinks the gospel writers read the whole idea of Jesus being the messiah back into his life afterward, Wright sees no evidence it happened that way.  They wrote that Jesus was the messiah because he had said as much to them.

So it goes through each subject.  For Wright, the gospels largely reflect Jesus' self-understanding and events that actually took place.  For Borg, they reflect the early church's metaphorical interpretations of Jesus, which had relatively little to do with actual events.  On the whole, Borg seems to make his case more clearly and in less ponderous prose.

The Meaning of Jesus provides a useful introduction to the contemporary scholarly quest for the historical Jesus.  It is not for the faint-hearted, and most lay readers will find that they need a dictionary to get through especially the early chapters.  For those who make the effort, however, there are important rewards.  One key thing this book and the larger quest for the historical Jesus does is to make us think more concretely about the humanity of Jesus—and to discover that the humanity of Jesus matters as much as his divinity.  The book also helps readers to think more concretely about the relationship of the gospels to Jesus.  It becomes clear that the gospels are faith documents, not historical biographies, and that they are not infallible and untouchable.

Finally, the friendly but intense dialogue between Borg and Wright, close personal friends, offers readers the opportunity to take less seriously what they believe about the Bible and various biblical doctrines.  What the two authors share is a faith in the living Christ, and The Meaning of Jesus is an invitation to share in that common faith in the face of different beliefs.  For those open to the possibility of dialogue across theological differences, Borg and Wright have given us a useful, encouraging model for how that dialogue can work.  And that alone is worth the price of admission.

Links for Marcus J. Borg:

---

Borg's Official Website
Wikipedia article
A Portrait of Jesus website
Spirituality & Practice website

Links for N. T. Wright:

---

N. T. Wright Page website
Wikipedia article
Open Evangelicalism Wikipedia entry

Links for the Study of the Historical Jesus:

---

"Historical Jesus Theories" webpage
Wikipedia article

McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

A book review of Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That are Transforming the Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2010).  

Brian McLaren has established himself as an iconoclastic Christian thinker committed to discovering new forms of the Christian faith appropriate to our times.  Author of a series of groundbreaking books, A New Kind of Christianity carries his arguments forward another important step, one that has proven controversial among conservative evangelicals who once considered him one of their own.  The book, in part, is an answer to his critics, in part it is an indictment of them, and in part a conscious attempt to move forward with those who share his quest for a new Christianity in a new age.

The book, in a sense, represents a new-age catechism containing ten questions and extended answers concerning the Bible, God, Jesus, the Gospel, the church, homosexuality, the future, pluralism, and how to move into the future.  The point of the catechism is to chart new directions for the Christian faith.  It represents McLaren's description of the quest.  Depending on one's theology, the answers are either excitingly helpful or dangerously radical.

Those answers begin with a rejection of mainstream Christian thinking going back almost to the early church.  McLaren contends that for most of our history, Western Christianity has been dominated by a Platonic, dualistic "Greco-Roman narrative."  It is an "us-against-them" story line that has forced Christians to behave in narrow-minded and violent ways that are not in keeping with Christ.  Among other things, it has foisted a false understanding of God on us.  McLaren names this false Christian god, "Theos."  He writes, "Theos loves spirit, state, and being, and hates matter, story, and becoming...So, having created a perfect world, now Theos is perfectly furious because it has been spoiled and is now decaying." (p. 42)  McLaren argues that the new Christianity has to reject Theos and leap back over the centuries and rediscover the biblical God, Elohim, who is peace-loving and compassionate, as well as just.  In doing so, we must also stop reading the Bible as if it is a code of laws or a legal constitution.  What the Bible actually is, he writes, is "a portable library of poems, prophecies, historical, fables, parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on." (p. 79)  He understands that the Bible is a culturally-bound human artifact, but  also believes it to be inspired in its diversity.  Although the Bible retains its authority in McLaren's "new kind of Christianity," he subordinates that authority to Christ.  We have to understand (and accept) that parts of the Bible represent an earlier, more primitive spirituality; Christ is the measure of what we take from scripture.  McLaren embraces the Bible because when read in its original setting it helps us to "become more sensitive than ever to the wonderful dance of the Spirit of God" and the minds of it authors at critical times in the history of the faith (see p. 146).

Jesus, then, takes us beyond Theos and away from the Greco-Roman narrative to discover in the Bible that "the humble man of peace is Lord."  He is the one we trust and give our allegiance to.  Jesus is not about power but about love.  In working through his view of Jesus, McLaren provides an extended discussion of the Gospel of John, which is often used to support a narrow, exclusivist understanding of salvation.  He sees a different narrative in John, one with clear parallels to the Old Testament; and he concludes that Jesus did come come to save people from hell but to "launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace." (p. 131)

Brian D. McLaren

McLaren contends that his "new" Christianity is actually a rediscovery of the faith of the earliest church.  He sees himself as a true conservative who is seeking to bring to center elements of that faith, which the Greco-Roman ideology has long shoved into the shadows.  In keeping with his program of rediscovery, he seeks to get back to basics so far as the church is concerned.  The church should be a "school of love," a place where we learn and practice "spiritual formation in the way of Christ." (p. 170)  By a school of love, he means, "...a school of listening, dialogue, appreciative inquiry, understanding, preemptive peacemaking, reconciliation, nonviolence, prophetic confrontation, advocacy, generosity, and personal and social transformation." (p. 171)  This school of love rejects the old, dualistic (I'm in - you're out) way of looking at others.  It embraces what McLaren calls "participatory eschatology," by which he means that humanity participates with God in creating God's future.  The future is not about wrath, armageddon, and an angry God dividing the damned from the saved.  In the school of love, we read the Bible with new eyes that affirm rather than condemn our neighbors of other faiths.

The last of McLaren's questions is, "How can we translate our quest into action?"  He charts the evolution of human spirituality in the context of seven stages or successive quests, which he categorizes with colors.  They are the quests for: survival (red zone); for security (orange zone), for power (yellow zone), for independence (green zone), for individuality (blue zone), for honesty (indigo zone), and for healing (violet).  Each age or quest contains the seeds of the next quest, and the human race does not pass through each stage uniformly.  Many are still "stuck" in older stages, and those trapped in an earlier quest reject, often angrily, the reality of the succeeding stage.  McLaren believes that the cutting edge of spiritual evolution has not reached the indigo zone of honest and that our quest is now to move forward into the stage of healing the destructive consequences of the previous quests.  It is a quest for peace (he prefers to use the African word, ubantu).  He also imagines an eighth quest, as yet unborn, the quest for sacredness (ultra violet zone).  The ultimate goal of human spirituality is the Kingdom of God, which lies still far in the future.  Working toward the Kingdom is what gives our lives purpose and direction in the present.

One of the characteristics of those like McLaren who now reside in the indigo zone is a tendency to look down on people who are still inhabiting earlier zones—and attack them as being primitive or conservative or fundamentalists.  He believes that the inhabitants of the indigo zone should resist that urge and, instead, seek to rise to the next level, the violet level of peace and healing.  Indigo zone folks thus should not be defensive or prideful but look to the future with hope.  McLaren is sure that there is a better world coming because that is God's will: "This is God's world.  It is clearer to us than ever that God created a universe of expansion and evolution."  As strong as resistance to growth and change might be, what abounds is "God's grace, God's invitation to grow into evert increasing aliveness, goodness, and love.  So I cannot help but have hope, because God is present with us." (p. 240)  McLaren concludes A New Kind of Christianity with several points of practical advice, among which is the admonition not to fight with those who resist but to gently move beyond them.

---

Conservative evangelicals don't like this book and have written a number of reviews highly critical of it.  One of the most detailed is by Mike Wittmer in his blog, "Don't Stop Believing."  In a series of postings he wrote in February 2010, Wittmer comments on each of McLaren's questions, sometimes dispassionately, sometimes with a little irritation, and sometimes with a disdain that matches the same disdain he feels McLaren has toward him and those like him.  For those seeking "the other side of the story," Wittmer is a good place to start.

Mainline progressives, on the other hand, will find McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity a comfortable read.  His description of the Greco-Roman captivity of the church and its false god, Theos, ring true. His use of scripture to make his points and the fresh perspectives he brings to the Bible are especially helpful.  More largely, progressive readers will find fresh perspectives on things that they already believe or understand.  McLaren doesn't so much break new ground as to provide additional tools for cultivating ground already dug.

Where McLaren is less than persuasive is in his sweeping rendition of human history as a series of quests.  It sounds spiffy and all, but it really doesn't make much sense, and it perpetuates the view that prehistoric peoples' lives were always a struggle to survive.  Not denying that it was, still one wonders if small bands of pre-historic humans living off the land struggled for survival any more than millions of homeless Americans who often don't know where their next meal will come from.  As we watch people in the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa struggle for a voice and for power, it is clear that in our age the quest for power remains potent, almost omnipresent.  And have we not been engaged for hundreds and thousands of years in a search for ubantu (santisuk in Thai)?

Besides the fact that it doesn't work historically, McLaren's color coded version of the human journey has a self-satisfied and slightly arrogant ring to it.  He clearly believes that he and those who travel with him have moved ahead of all others in terms of human spiritual evolution.  He dismisses his critics as inhabitants of the earlier stages of that evolution—people stuck in older quests.  As hard as he tries to warn his readers (and remind himself) that arrogance and judgment is not the way forward, a thread of disdain for his adversaries winds its way through the text.  He honestly believes that he knows more and sees with greater clarity, and he is not particularly humble about it.  That's fine, but it really isn't helpful to assign his critics and large numbers of faithful Christians to a lower rung on the spiritual evolutionary totem pole—especially when that totem pole is largely fanciful anyway.

That being said, there is a great deal to commend in this book.  It helps those who are searching for new ways to think about their faith to understand the sources of their discontent with the inherited traditions and doctrines of the church (the Greco-Roman narrative).  It takes the Bible seriously while freeing scripture from biblical literalism and narrow constructions.  Looking at the Bible through the lens of Christ and making him the measure of scripture provides a helpful, faithful, and Christ-like way to use the Bible as a resource without having to buy into the less happy aspects of the ancient text (such as those passages that subordinate women or the ones used to damn homosexuals).

A New Kind of Christianity is an important book.  It addresses the feeling among many faithful Christians that something is wrong, that something no longer satisfies (or never did).  It helps individuals who are seeking new directions to reconnect with the Bible in its own setting and to make sense of those new directions in light of the person of Jesus.  It is, in sum, a catechism for the 21st century, a set of questions and answers that make sense for many faithful followers of Jesus in the real world of today.

Links for Brian D. McLaren

---

Official Website
Wikipedia article