The Heart of Christianity

by Marcus J. Borg

whenever we emphasize the divinity of Jesus at the expense of his humanity, we lose track of the utterly remarkable human being that he was.

Two claims are central for the emerging paradigm’s way of seeing the gospels. First, the gospels are the product of a developing tradition.

Second, the gospels are not only a developing tradition, but they also combine memory and metaphor.

So, what is the story of Jesus about? According to John’s inaugural story of Jesus’ public activity, it is about a wedding. More: it is about a wedding banquet. More: it is about a wedding banquet at which the wine never runs out. More: it is about a wedding banquet at which the wine never runs out, and the best is saved for last.

Fourth, a historical-metaphorical approach matters because it helps us to see the meaning of our christological language, by which I mean the exalted “titles” used to refer to Jesus’ identity and significance in the New Testament.

It is not the language of self-proclamation, but the community’s testimony to Jesus’ significance in their lives.

Indeed, for me this language is more powerful as the testimony of a community than if I try to imagine it as language a man used about himself.

But “Son of God” is a metaphor like the rest. It affirms that Jesus’ relationship to God is intimate, like that of child to parent. To echo language from John’s gospel: the son knows the father, and the father knows the son, and the son is the father’s beloved.

Jesus is, for us as Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life. As the Word and Wisdom and Spirit of God become flesh, his life incarnates the character of God, indeed, the passion of God. In him we see God’s passion.

To paraphrase William Sloane Coffin, a contemporary author and activist: for us as Christians, God is defined by Jesus, but not confined to Jesus.

He was a Jewish mystic.

We as Christians participate in the only major religious tradition whose founder was executed by established authority.

If Jesus had been only a mystic, healer, and wisdom teacher, he almost certainly would not have been executed. Rather, he was killed because of his politics—because of his passion for God’s justice.

In the judgment of the majority of mainline scholars, atonement theology does not go back to Jesus himself. We do not think that Jesus thought that the purpose of his life, his vocation, was his death.

At least five interpretations of the cross are found in the New Testament itself.

The second, sometimes known as “the defeat of the powers” understanding of the cross, also stays close to the political meaning.15 Now, it is not simply the Roman and aristocratic rulers in Judea who are seen as responsible, but the “powers” they represent and incarnate. The language is found primarily in letters attributed to Paul: the world is in bondage to “the principalities and powers,” “the elemental spirits of the universe,” “the prince of the power of the air.”

The third sees the death of Jesus as the revelation of “the way.”

The path (which I will say more about in the next chapter) is dying to an old way of being and being raised into a new way of being.

The fourth also sees the death of Jesus as a revelation: it reveals the depth of God’s love for us.

The fifth is the familiar sacrificial understanding of Jesus’ death: “Jesus died for our sins.” Though its ingredients are in the New Testament, its full development did not occur until about nine hundred years ago.

If taken literally, all of this is very strange. It implies a limitation on God’s power to forgive; namely, God can forgive only if adequate sacrifice is made.

But in its first-century setting, the statement “Jesus is the sacrifice for sin” had a quite different meaning.

According to temple theology, certain kinds of sins and impurities could be dealt with only through sacrifice in the temple. Temple theology thus claimed an institutional monopoly on the forgiveness of sins; and because the forgiveness of sins was a prerequisite for entry into the presence of God, temple theology also claimed an institutional monopoly on access to God.

to affirm “Jesus is the sacrifice for sin” was to deny the temple’s claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God.

Thus “Jesus died for our sins” was originally a subversive metaphor, not a literal description of either God’s purpose or Jesus’ vocation.

But I do have faith in the cross as a trustworthy disclosure of the evil of domination systems, as the exposure of the defeat of the powers, as the revelation of the “way” or “path” of transformation, as the revelation of the depth of God’s love for us, and as the proclamation of radical grace. I have faith in the cross as all of those things.

Thus Jesus is a metaphor of God. Indeed, for us as Christians, he is the metaphor of God. Of course, he was also a real person. As metaphor of God, Jesus discloses what God is like. We see God through Jesus.

The death of Jesus—his execution—was because of his passion for God and God’s justice. And because we see Jesus as the revelation of God, we see in his life and death the passion of God. He discloses both the character and passion of God.

Jesus is also a sacrament of God, a means through whom the Spirit of God becomes present.

To apply the story to the church’s adoration of Jesus in our Christology, creeds, worship, art, music, architecture, and so forth: I think Jesus would have said, “It’s not about me.”

And then Jesus says, “It’s not about me.” He points beyond himself to God—to God’s character and passion.

The biblical understanding of salvation is both personal and political. It is about both the individual and society, both spiritual and social. It concerns us as persons; it is about our relationship with God as individuals. And it is also about politics, about our life together as societies, about justice—about political, social, and economic justice.

Unfortunately, mainline Christians have generally allowed their more conservative Christian brothers and sisters to have a near monopoly on “born again” language.

But rightly understood, being born again is a very rich and comprehensive notion. It is at the very center of the New Testament and the Christian life. We need to reclaim it.

In the gospels and in the rest of the New Testament, death and resurrection, dying and rising, are again and again a metaphor for personal transformation, for the psychological-spiritual process at the center of the Christian life.

To follow Jesus meant to follow him on the path of death. And to make sure that we understand this metaphorically, Luke adds the word “daily” to the phrase to “take up their cross.”

The framing suggests that seeing, having one’s sight restored, involves seeing that following Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem is “the way”—the path of transformation leads to and through death and resurrection.

So also in Paul’s letters: dying and rising with Jesus, dying and rising with Christ, is a metaphor for the personal transformation at the heart of the Christian life.12

Death and resurrection—being born again—as a metaphor for personal transformation is the foundation for Paul’s shorthand phrase for naming the new life. It is life “in Christ.” Paul uses “in Christ” 165 times in his letters and the virtually synonymous phrase “in the Spirit” about 20 times.15

To the Christian community in Corinth, Paul wrote: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”16

And how does one become “in Christ”? For Paul, by dying to our old life, to life “in Adam,” and being reborn in Christ.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”20 To set this verse in the context of John’s incarnational theology: just as Jesus is the “Word made flesh,” so he is “the way” made flesh, the path embodied in a life. The key question then becomes: What is “the way” that Jesus incarnates? What is “the way” that Jesus is? For John, as for the New Testament generally, “the way” embodied in Jesus is the path of death and resurrection. Dying and rising is the only way to God.

Rather, “the way” is what we see incarnate in Jesus: the path of death and resurrection as the way to rebirth in God.

In particular, the early Christian movement saw the cross as a symbol of “the way.”

But I think “dying to self” is too imprecise because it is subject to misunderstanding. “Dying to self” has been used to encourage the repression of the self and its legitimate desires.

But the cross is the means of our liberation and reconnection. It is not about the subjugation of the self, but about a new self.

Why do we need to be born again? Why do we need to die to an old way of being and an old identity and be born into a new way of being and a new identity—into a life centered in God, in the Spirit, in Christ? The reason is because of something that happens in us very early in life and then is intensified by the process of growing up.

What happens early in our lives is the birth of self-consciousness. By this, I mean simply self-awareness, that is, awareness of the distinction between self and world.

The birth and intensification of self-consciousness, of self-awareness, involves a separation from God.22

The birth of self-consciousness is the birth of the separated self. When this happens, the natural and inevitable result is self-concern. The two go together: the separated self and the self-centered self.