Marcus Borg 1942-2015

 

I had just finished reading his book 'The heart of Christianity' when I learned of the death at the age of 72 of American theologian, Marcus Borg. Alongside John Robinson, Don Cupitt, Richard Holloway, John Spong, John Dominic Croissan, Borg has played a major role in the development of my own theology over the past 35 years.


Borg polarised opinions. The New Testament scholar was both praised for his independent thinking and attempts to make the gospel credible, as he saw it, to the modern age, and vilified for his radical departures from Christian orthodoxy.


He was one of a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar. Borg, like the other Jesus Seminar participants, rejected the miraculous. An example of his approach is in a piece he wrote on his blog during Advent last year, in which lamented that "Advent and Christmas have virtually been swallowed up by the miraculous", such as the stories of the visits of angels and the wise men being guided by a star. "To be candid, I do not think that any of this happened," he wrote. "Of course, there is some historical memory in the stories. Jesus was born. He really lived. He was Jewish. His parents' names were Mary and Joseph. They lived in Nazareth, a very small peasant village, perhaps as small as a few hundred. But I do not think that there was an annunciation by an angel to Mary, or a virginal conception, or a special star, or wise men from the East visiting the infant Jesus, or angels filling the night with glory as they sang to shepherds."

However, he denied being a "debunker" of the stories and said there was a "third way" between regarding them as fact or fable: "Rather, they are early Christian testimony, written roughly a hundred years after Jesus' birth. They testify to the significance that Jesus had come to have in their lives and experience and thought. The stories are parabolic, metaphorical narratives that can be true without being factual." Advent and Christmas, he said, "are about the biblical hope and way, the path, to a new kind of world. They are about our rebirth and the world's rebirth."

Unlike some other 'progressive Christians', he was respected both for his personal spirituality and for his willingness to engage courteously with orthodox believers. The former Bishop of Durham, academic N T Wright, took part in public debates with him and paid tribute to him saying that despite their disagreements, he and Borg shared "a deep and rich mutual affection and friendship".

Theologian Brian D McClaren wrote: "Hardly the hard-bitten 'liberal theologian' out to eviscerate Christianity of any actual faith, he impressed me as a fellow Christian seeking an honest, thoughtful, and vital faith, ready to dialogue respectfully with people who see things differently."

Borg also wrote on his blog that he sought to be "an evangelist to those in the Christian middle – people who are still in churches but who are troubled by some and perhaps many of conventional Christian beliefs that were taken for granted not so long ago".

Progressive Christianity Network

 

The Progressive Christianity Network Britain (A Registered Charity No 1102164) works to promote and support open and contemporary Christian understanding. It provides a network of local groups across the country, publishes a radical quarterly newsletter, and organises regular conferences and events. Members come from all denominations.

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The Network recognises the value and significance of tradition and the scriptures in the shaping of Christian faith. But faith must be of today, not just the past. It values the Eight Points first formulated by the Centre for Progressive Christianity in America and adapted for the UK by PCN Britain, not as a creed or a statement of faith, but as an expression of how we live as Christians.

The eight points

We are Christians who…

1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus;
2. Recognise the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the gateway to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;
3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus’ name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all peoples;
4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):
   • believers and agnostics
   • conventional Christians and questioning sceptics
   • women and men
   • those of all sexual orientations and gender identities
   • those of all races and cultures
   • those of all classes and abilities
   • those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;
5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;
6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty, more value in questioning than in absolutes;
7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people; protecting and restoring the integrity of all God’s creation; and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers;
8. Recognise that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

http://www.pcnbritain.org.uk



 

The Epiphany

Some thoughts on 'A cold coming we had of it' by T S Eliot

'Like so much in the Christmas narrative, the arrival of the wise men has been romanticized in our telling of the story. Our versions tend to focus on their arrival at the manger, their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, their brave decision to rebel against Herod (Matthew 2:1-12). We see them as a sign that even earthly rulers are humbled before the throne of the newborn king.

But Eliot suggests a far different reading of the Magi. There is little triumph, little nobility in his narrative. Instead, it is grim, earthy, crude. There is doubt. There is complaining. There is despair.

When Eliot wrote this poem, not only was he a fairly new Christian, he was also in the throes of a difficult, disintegrating marriage. Coming to the faith at mid-life, Eliot’s conversion was not a simple matter of belief out of unbelief, but of a long, slow, clearly painful process of letting go of one life and clinging desperately to another. Like the Magi, the new convert travels out of one country into a sometimes dark, dank, unfamiliar place where the natives are not always kind, the sleep often restless, the mission undefined. Is it a birth or a death? “I had seen birth and death,” he writes, “But had thought they were different; this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”

Through Eliot’s words, we are invited into a different telling of the Christmas story, one in which the reframing of the world, the mixing of kingdoms ushered in by the Incarnation, brings as much pain and struggle as it brings joy and peace. This is not a simple story of God entering the world and all being well. We know there is great tragedy to come in this story, that it won’t always make sense. We know that our stories, too, are laced with sorrow and loss and the constant need to choose faith and hope over despair and confusion. As we wander through mountains and deserts and what can often be vast wastelands of doubt, we face that “hard and bitter agony” of leaving behind our old kingdoms and making our way into new ones. And yet, in the midst of this tension, we, like the Magi, find ourselves glad of another death as we slowly let go of the darkness and cling to the light.' (from an article by Carla Barnhill of the Christian History Insitute)

The Journey of the Magi
by T S Eliot

 

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Journey of the Magi

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