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".
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