23 May 11

Back From Pilgrimage: Paul in Asia Minor

I have just returned from Turkey, where my wife and I and Dom and Sarah Crossan led a two-week long pilgrimage. Our focus: Paul and early Christianity in the historical context of the Roman Empire and Roman imperial theology. Rome ruled the world of early Christianity: from Spain in the west, Britain in the north, the Euphrates in the east, into North Africa in the south.

Roman rule was legitimated by imperial theology.  According to it,

Caesar Augustus, the greatest of the emperors, was divine. Born Octavian around 63 BCE, he ruled as emperor from 31 BCE to 14 CE. His titles included “God,” “Son of God,” “Lord,” “savior of the world” who had brought “peace on earth.” He was the product of a divine conception, conceived in his mother by the god Apollo, god of light, reason and order.

continue »

8 Comments Posted in early Christianity, travel by
16 May 11

The Resurrection of Jesus: “Physical/Bodily” or “Spiritual/Mystical”?

I was recently invited to write an essay on whether the resurrection of Jesus was “physical and bodily” or “spiritual and mystical.”  The distinction is helpful: it makes clear that Christians have understood the meanings of Easter in different ways. But for more than one reason, including the common meanings of these words in modern English, I don’t like either option.

I begin with the positive – with what we can say with certainty about the meaning of Easter in the gospels and the New Testament. It is twofold: Jesus lives and is Lord.

Both convictions are grounded in experience. Some of Jesus’ followers experienced him after his death as a figure of the present, not just of the past. And they experienced him as a divine reality, now “one with God” and “at the right hand of God.”

continue »

29 Comments Posted in understanding God by
7 May 11

Holy Week: Two Different Meanings

jesus-stained-glassHoly Week with its climax in Easter is for Christians what Passover is for Jews: the most important week of the year – a sacred time during which its primordial and primal narrative is remembered and ultimately celebrated.

What is this week about? Within Christianity today, two very different frameworks shape how this week is seen – its meanings and significance. These two frameworks to a considerable degree divide American Christianity both theologically and politically.

One framework is “the common Christianity” of the recent past and present – what most Christians took for granted and what many still share in common.  For it, the central message of Christianity, the gospel, the good news, is that Jesus died for our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to heaven. Within this framework, Good Friday is about Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins and Easter is about the promise of life beyond death.

continue »

3 Comments Posted in understanding God by
7 Feb 11

God’s Non-Violent Revolutionary

Was Jesus a social revolutionary? In the ordinary sense in which we use the phrase “social revolutionary,” yes. Like the Jewish prophets before him, he was passionate about economic justice and peace, and advocated active non-violent resistance to the domination system of his time. He was a voice of peasant social protest against the economic inequity and violence of the imperial domination system, mediated in the Jewish homeland by client rulers of the Roman Empire – in Galilee, Herod Antipas, and in Judea and Jerusalem, the temple authorities. He spoke of God’s kingdom on earth, as the Lord’s Prayer puts it: Your kingdom come on earth, as it already is in heaven. Heaven is not the problem – earth is.

continue »

8 Comments Posted in Jesus, politics, prayer by
Tagged , ,
5 Oct 10

Interview with Marcus Borg on his Novel

Marcus Borg was interviewed by editor David Crumm on ReadTheSpirit. They discussed Dr. Borg’s novel, “Putting Away Childish Things.”

David: Why did you suddenly write a novel after so many years of writing nonfiction?

Marcus: I could give a number of answers. But, the main one is that I’ve presented my ideas in nonfiction and, now—by creating characters with various points of view in this novel—I can give readers more of a sense of how people struggle with these ideas in everyday life. Now, rather than just me presenting my ideas to readers, characters are in dialogue about the ideas.

continue »

10 Comments Posted in faith, gender issues, My Books, reviews by
Tagged , , ,
1 Sep 10

American Christians Are Deeply Divided

The United States has more Christians than any country in the world, both in numbers and as a per cent of our population. Roughly 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Only about half are actively involved in the life of a church, but this is still a large number. But are we a Christian nation?

I leave unaddressed whether a nation can (or should) be Christian. Instead, I point to a deep division among American Christians about what it means to be Christian.

continue »

10 Comments Posted in America, definitions, politics, understanding God, word meanings by
Tagged , ,
1 Aug 10

Religion’s Egalitarianism Impulse

Most cultures have been patriarchal, and the world’s religions have for the most part sanctified patriarchy, legitimating it in their teaching and practice. I illustrate with Christianity, the religion I know best.

In most Christian cultures, women:
* Have been taught to be subordinate to their husbands.
* Have been blamed for the presence of sin in the world.
* As late as the 19th century,  could not inherit or own property, or initiate divorce.
* Until very recently, could not be ordained as clergy.
* Were sometimes persecuted with the blessing of the church (estimates of the number of women executed as “witches” vary widely, though clearly it happened a lot).

continue »

6 Comments Posted in early Christianity, gender issues, injustice by
Tagged , , , , ,
1 Jul 10

Mystical Experiences of God

My most formative religious experiences were a series of mystical experiences. They began to occur in my early thirties. They changed my understanding of the meaning of the word “God”-of what that word points to-and gave me an unshakable conviction that God (or “the sacred”) is real and can be experienced.

These experiences also convinced me that mystical forms of Christianity are true, and that the mystical forms of all the enduring religions of the world are true.

continue »

43 Comments Posted in mysticism, understanding God, word meanings by
Tagged , ,
15 Jun 10

Narrow is the Way

A reader recently asked this question:

Q: How do you understand “broad is the way that leads to destruction, narrow is the path to salvation”? This has been used to justify Christianity as the ONLY true path to the exclusion of all other religions. I have just read your “Heart of Christianity” and I want to know how you interpret that phrase in the Bible.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. – Matthew 13-14

A: Your biblical memory is good. Jesus (like much of the OT) spoke of two ways, one that leads to life and one that leads to death (both states this side of physical death).

continue »

13 Comments Posted in Jesus, revelation by
Tagged
23 May 10

Yes and No

jesus-headYes, Jesus is the Son of God, Lord and Christ; the Light of the World and the Bread of Life; and the Way, Truth and Life. He is all of this for me, as a Christian who is also a historian of early Christianity.

And yet I do not think that Jesus spoke of himself with these grand terms and phrases.

Together with most mainstream scholars, I see the gospels as containing earlier and later layers of Christian traditions about Jesus as they developed during the first century. The gospels (and to some extent, the New Testament as a whole) contain the early Christian movement’s memory of Jesus and their testimony to what Jesus had become in early Christian experience, conviction and thought.

continue »

8 Comments Posted in definitions, early Christianity, historical, Jesus, revelation by
Tagged , , , ,

« Older Posts