The Heart of Christianity

by Marcus J. Borg

The notion that salvation is primarily about “going to heaven” is a distortion; and when it is seen as primary, the notion of unconditional grace leads to the notion that everybody gets to go to heaven, regardless of their life and faith. However, unconditional grace is not about the afterlife, but the basis for our relationship with God in this life.

Taking the God of love and justice and the God of grace seriously has immediate implications for the Christian message. It becomes: God loves us already and has from our very beginning. The Christian life is not about believing or doing what we need to believe or do so that we can be saved. Rather, it’s about seeing what is already true—that God loves us already—and then beginning to live in this relationship. It is about becoming conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God.

The “bad news” version is that there will be a last judgment, either at the end of our lives or at the end of history, and you better be ready or you’ll be in deep trouble. This is Christianity as a religion of threat, anxiety, and self-preservation.

The “good news” version is the invitation into a new life here and now, one that transforms us personally and seeks to transform life in this world. The “bad news” version is the saving of some from the devouring fire that will consume the rest. The “good news” version is a vision of transformed people and a transformed earth filled with the glory of God.

one of the defining characteristics of Christianity is that we find the revelation of God primarily in a person, an affirmation unique among the major religions of the world.

As I turn to the emerging paradigm’s view of Jesus, I emphasize five major reasons why “seeing Jesus again” matters.

The first reason a historical-metaphorical approach matters is that an earlier image of Jesus and the image of the Christian life that goes with it have become unpersuasive to millions of people in the last century.

The Pre-Easter and Post-Easter Jesus

Second, a historical-metaphorical approach matters because of the important distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus.

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. If we think that his wisdom, compassion, courage, and healing powers were the result of his divinity, then they are in a sense “not much.”

The Nature of the Gospels

Third, a historical-metaphorical approach matters because it helps us to see the nature of the gospels and thus to understand them better.

Second, the gospels are not only a developing tradition, but they also combine memory and metaphor. Like the Bible in general, they are a mixture of historical memory and metaphorical narrative.

In our time, many need to hear about the distinction between history and metaphor because there are many parts of the gospels that they can’t take literally.

The Meaning of Our Christological Language

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.

Four statements are important. First, this language is post-Easter. A strong majority of mainline scholars think it unlikely that Jesus said these things about himself; he probably did not speak of himself as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Light of the World, and so forth. Rather, this is the voice of the community in the years and decades after Easter. It is not the language of self-proclamation, but the community’s testimony to Jesus’ significance in their lives.

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.

Second, all of this language is metaphorical.

But we have tended to literalize at least one of the christological titles, namely “Son of God.” We have done so in part because of a literal reading of the birth stories and in part because of the prominence of “Son of God” in the creeds and in our language about the Trinity. But “Son of God” is a metaphor like the rest.

This relational understanding of “son of God” is found in the Jewish world of Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, Israel is called son of God, as are the kings of Israel and Judah. Closer to the time of Jesus, Jewish mystics who were healers were sometimes referred to as God’s son. And “son” resonates with agency as well;

Third, christological language is language of confession and commitment.

As confessional language, it is also the language of commitment. It would make no sense to say, “Jesus is the light of the world,” and then be indifferent to him.

the fourth statement, a crystallization of the meaning of the community’s christological language. In a single sentence: 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.

The fifth and final reason the historical-metaphorical study of Jesus matters builds upon the cumulative meaning of christological language; namely, because Jesus is for us as Christians the decisive disclosure of what a life full of God looks like, what we can glimpse of the pre-Easter Jesus matters.

here provide a compact summary of my five-stroke sketch of the pre-Easter Jesus:11

He was a Jewish mystic.

Mystics are people who have vivid and typically frequent experiences of God, “the One,” “the sacred.”

He was a healer.

He was a wisdom teacher.

Teachers of wisdom teach a way, a path, of life. The “narrow way” of which Jesus spoke led beyond the “broad way” of convention and tradition.

At the heart of the alternative wisdom of Jesus was the path of death and resurrection understood as a metaphor for an internal psychological-spiritual process. It involved dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity, dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being. The new identity and new way of being was a life radically centered in God, in the Spirit of God Jesus knew in his own experience.

He was a social prophet.

The historical analogy is the great social prophets of the Hebrew Bible, figures such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micah. They were God-intoxicated voices of religious social protest against the economic and po...

He was a movement initiator.

It was a deeply Jewish movement, both in constituency and vision. Remarkably inclusive, it subverted the sharp social boundaries of his day. Its most visible public activity was its inclusive meal practice, often targeted by Jesus’ critics. He ate with

The meal practice of Jesus affirmed that bread and inclusivity—not the sharply divided and subsistence world of the domination system—is the Kingdom of God.

The Death of Jesus: The Cross in History and Theology

And Jesus was killed. This is one of those facts that everybody knows, but whose significance is often overlooked. He d...

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. His purpose was what he was doing as a healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement initiator. His death was the consequence of what he was doing, but not his purpose.

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

The first stays closest to the political meaning of the cross. It is a simple rejection-and-vindication understanding of Good Friday and Easter. The authorities rejected Jesus and killed him; but God has vindicated Jesus by raising him to God’s right hand.

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 third sees the death of Jesus as the revelation of “the way.” His death and resurrection are seen as the embodiment or incarnation of the path of internal psychological and spiritual transformation that lies at the center of the Christian life.

The fourth also sees the death of Jesus as a revelation: it reveals the depth of God’s love for us. For this interpretation to work, one must think of Jesus not simply historically as a Jewish social prophet executed by the authorities, but as the Son of God sent into the world for us and our salvation.

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.

In its developed form, it sees the story of Jesus primarily within the framework of sin, guilt, and forgiveness. We have all sinned against God and are guilty. Our sins can be forgiven only if an adequate sacrifice is made.

God provides the perfect sacrifice in the form of the perfect human, Jesus. Now forgiveness is possible, but only for those who believe that Jesus died for our sins.

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