The Heart of Christianity

by Marcus J. Borg

The earlier paradigm sees Christianity as grounded in divine authority. For most Protestants, divine authority resides in the Bible. For Catholics, it resides not only in the Bible but also in the teaching authority of the church, expressed especially clearly in the notion of papal infallibility.

The earlier paradigm sees the Bible as a divine product. For this paradigm, the Bible comes from God as no other book does. It is the unique revelation of God.

The earlier paradigm’s vision of the Bible and the Christian tradition, whether in harder or softer forms, goes with a way of seeing the Christian life. Three features are particularly important.

Faith as believing is central.

The afterlife is central.

The Christian life is about requirements and rewards.

Put most simply, it sees the Christian life as believing in Christianity now for the sake of salvation later. It sees the Bible as God’s message of salvation (meaning a blessed afterlife), and sees the Christian life as believing in the message and seeking to live accordingly. And believing is the central requirement: it is believing that will save you.

modernity has not only affected the forms of Christianity that have accepted it and sought to integrate it, but also the forms of Christianity that have strongly rejected it. In particular, the earlier paradigm is very much a product of modernity. Though it sounds like traditional Christianity to many people, including those who embrace it as well as those who reject it, it is important to realize that its central features are the product of the last few hundred years.

Historical: For the emerging paradigm, the Bible is the historical product of two ancient communities, ancient Israel and the early Christian movement. The Bible was not written to us or for us, but for the ancient communities that produced it. A historical approach emphasizes the illuminating power of interpreting these ancient documents in their ancient historical contexts.

Metaphorical:The emerging paradigm sees the Bible metaphorically, by which I mean its “more-than-literal,” “more-than-factual,” meaning. It is not very much concerned with the historical factuality of the Bible’s stories, but much more with their meanings. It is not bothered by the possibility that the stories of Jesus’ birth and resurrection are metaphorical rather than literally factual accounts. It asks, “Whether it happened this way or not, what is this story saying? What meanings does it have for us?”

Sacramental:The emerging paradigm sees the Bible sacramentally, by which I mean the Bible’s ability to mediate the sacred. A sacrament is something visible and physical whereby the Spirit becomes present to us. A sacrame...

the emerging paradigm sees the Bible as sacred scripture, but not because it is a divine product. It is sacred in its status and function, but not in its origin. The point is not to believe in the Bible and the Christian tradition, but to live within them as a metaphor and sacrament o...

Being Christian is not about meeting requirements for a future reward in an afterlife, and not very much about believing. Rather, the Christian life is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present. To be Christian does not mean believing in Christianity, but a relationship with God lived within the Christian tradition as a metaphor and sacrament of the sacred.

Despite their differences, the two paradigms share central convictions in common. The emerging paradigm, as I describe it, strongly affirms the reality of God, the centrality of the Bible, the centrality of Jesus, the importance of a relationship with God as known in Jesus, and our need (and the world’s need) for transformation.

Faith as Assensus

This is faith as belief—that is, as giving one’s mental assent to a proposition, as believing that a claim or statement is true. Sometimes called a propositional understanding of faith, it is the dominant meaning today, both within the church and outside it.

Faith as Fiducia

fiducia is faith as “trust,” as radical trust in God. Significantly, it does not mean trusting in the truth of a set of statements about God; that would simply be assensus under a different name. Rather, it means trusting in God.

Faith as trust is like floating in a deep ocean.

If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink. But if you relax and trust, you will float.

The opposite of trust is not doubt or disbelief, but mistrust. More interestingly and provocatively, its opposite is “anxiety” or “worry.”

we can measure our degree of faith as trust by the amount of anxiety in our lives.

Faith as Fidelitas

This is faith as “faithfulness.”

Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart.”

Faith as fidelitas does not mean faithfulness to statements about God, whether biblical, credal, or doctrinal. Rather, it means faithfulness to the God to whom the Bible and creeds and doctrines point. Fidelitas refers to a radical centering in God.

Christian faith means loyalty to Jesus as Lord, and not to the seductive would-be lords of our lives, whether the nation, or affluence, or achievement, or family, or desire.

To be faithful to God means not only to love God, but to love that which God loves—namely, the neighbor, and indeed the whole of creation. Faith as fidelitas thus includes an ethical imperative.

Faith as Visio

this is faith as a way of seeing. In particular, this is faith as a way of seeing the whole, a way of seeing “what is.”

This way of seeing the whole makes possible a different response to life. It leads to radical trust. It frees us from the anxiety, self-preoccupation, and concern to protect the self with systems of security

the point is that how we see reality matters, for how we see “what is” profoundly affects how we experience and live our lives.

faith as visio is seeing reality as gracious. Its opposite—“un-faith”—is seeing reality as hostile and threatening or as indifferent.

for Luther faith was not primarily assensus. After his decision to enter a monastery in a moment of terror during a lightning storm, Luther went through a decade of agonized torment and ascetic self-denial, seeking to be righteous enough for God. During these years, he had assensus aplenty—and it terrified him. Precisely because he believed “all of it,” he was filled with fear and anxiety. His transformation occurred through an experience of radical grace that transformed how he saw (visio), led him to see that faith was about trusting God (fiducia), and led him to a life of faithfulness (fidelitas) to God. For Luther, saving faith was not assensus. It was about visio, fiducia, and fidelitas.12

Being Christian means affirming the reality of God.God is real.

The Bible, and all of the enduring religions of the world, unambiguously affirm that there is a stupendous, magnificent, wondrous “More.” Christian faith includes affirming this.

Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus.It means seeing Jesus as the decisive disclosure of God and of what a life full of God looks like. It means affirming Jesus as the Word of God, the wisdom of God, the ...

Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible.Just as Jesus is for us the Word of God disclosed in a person, so the Bible is the Word of God disclosed in a book. Being Christian means a commitment to the Bible as our foundational document and identity document. The Bible is our story. It is to shape our vision of life—our vision of God, of ourselves, and of God’s dream for the earth.

We commonly translate credo as “I believe.” And because most modern people understand “I believe” as “I give my assent to,” many Christians have difficulty with the creeds.

credo does not mean “I hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following statements.” Rather, its Latin roots combine to mean “I give my heart to.”

when we say credo at the beginning of the creed, we are saying, “I give my heart to God.”

Just as credo involves a level of the self deeper than the intellect, so do the premodern meanings of the word “believe.” Prior to the seventeenth century, the word “believe” did not mean believing in the truth of statements or propositions, whether problematic or not.

Grammatically, the object of believing was not statements, but a person. Moreover, the contexts in which it is used in premodern English make it clear that it meant: to hold dear; to prize; to give one’s loyalty to; to give one’s self to; to commit oneself.

Most simply, “to believe” meant “to love.”

At the center of the Christian life are two relationships that are ultimately one. The first relationship is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, life force, mind, and strength.” The second relationship, “like it,” is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

the passage concludes with “Upon these two relationships hang all the law and the prophets.”15 In the time of Jesus, the law and the prophets, the first two parts of the Hebrew Bible, were all that had been canonized. Thus Jesus declares that the whole of scripture hangs on these two relationships. The Christian life is as simple and challenging as this: to love God and to love that which God loves.

to be Christian is to be centered in the God of the Bible. This is a mark not of Christian exclusion, but of Christian identity. The Bible is for us as Christians our sacred scripture, our sacred story.

The emerging paradigm provides an alternative to biblical literalism. To use the three adjectives with which I describe it: a historical, metaphorical, and sacramental understanding of the Bible.

The Bible as a Historical Product

The Bible is the product of two historical communities, ancient Israel and the early Christian movement.